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PATHS OF RUIN: WHY REVISIONIST STATES
ARISE AND DIE IN WORLD POLITICS
A Dissertation
Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School
of Cornell University
in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of
Doctor of Philosophy
by
Jason M.K. Lyall
May 2005
3
PATHS OF RUIN: WHY REVISIONIST STATES ARISE AND DIE IN WORLD POLITICS
Jason M.K. Lyall, Ph.D.
Cornell University 2005
Why do revisionist states arise and die in world politics? I argue that the origins
of a revisionist’s emergence and “death” stem from the same source: the
nature of the collective identity that a regime uses to legitimate its rule at home and
abroad. Revisionists share a key ideational trait in the form of exclusive, often
contradictory, identity projects that entrap regimes into pursuing risky strategies of
revisionism. Indeed, the path dependent properties of identity gradually entrap regimes
into suboptimal policies marked by reliance on high-risk, high-gain strategies. Two
mechanisms – domestic counter-mobilization and the security dilemma – serve to lock
regimes onto these paths. Over time, state security is sacrificed to the demands of regime
survival, leaving regimes unprepared for the conflicts that their rhetoric has forced them
to pursue. Regime death is often the result.
Multiple methods are used to demonstrate the causal link between identity and
behavior. A large-N study of revisionist success rates (1815-2000) is combined with two
paired historical comparisons: a method-of-agreement comparison of Napoleon III’s
France (1848-71) and Pakistan (1947-71) and a method-of-difference treatment of France
(1815-48) and the Soviet Union (1917-45). The prospects of a resurgent Russia are also
explored using a longitudinal study of the postcommunist era (1993-2004). This case
employs computer-assisted content analysis of official statements (N=1096), field
research (interviews and participant observation), and comparative event data of foreign
policy behavior.
Three conclusions are reached. First, collective identity plays a crucial role in
shaping the nature of grand strategy and its effectiveness. Collective identities can narrow
4
choices available to elites, ultimately entrapping regimes on suboptimal “paths of ruin.”
Second, there is a limited set of robust and generalizable paths to revisionism that are
created by exclusive, often fragmented, collective identities. Third, to explain revisionism
fully we must adopt theoretical approaches and research designs able to capture the slow
unfolding of identity politics between a regime and its society over time. Films, not
snapshots, are required if we are to understand that the origins of revisionism lie in
cumulative effects set in motion by the creation and defense of a regime’s identity
project.
5
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
There is a story of uncertain provenance that has a poor farmer granted a wish by
a mysterious visitor to his fields. All that the farmer can encircle in one day, he is told,
will be his, if only he can return to the same fields before next morning’s sunrise. If he
fails, however, he forfeits all his possessions. Setting off in haste, our farmer encounters
new wonders, each surpassing the last, each taking him farther from his familiar fields –
and, of course, farther from the point of (no) return. Belatedly, our farmer realizes he has
wandered too far afield, and in desperation he turns for home, chasing a rising sun.
That I managed to wander so far afield yet still complete the circle is a testament
to my committee: Peter Katzenstein (Chair), Valerie Bunce, Matthew Evangelista, and
Christopher Way. I owe these four a debt that I cannot repay, in part for the sound advice
each freely offered but mostly for taking a chance on me. I will always cherish my time at
Cornell, a wondrous place where disciplinary boundaries dissolve and “big” questions are
not just encouraged but expected. Each committee member contributed in his or her own
way to this dissertation. Whatever insights lie in the following pages are a testament to
the rigor they demanded and the confidence they inspired.
The list of people who helped along the way is also long. I was fortunate to be an
Exchange Scholar at Harvard University, where Iain Johnston, Stephen Rosen, Timothy
Colton, Yoshiko Herrera, and Lisa Martin opened their classes to me. The Harvard
Identity Project (HIP) has also been an invisible college of sorts for those interested in
conducting research on identity. I thank Rawi Abdelal, Yoshiko Herrera, Iain Johnston,
and Rose McDermott for including me in its activities. I also thank Joe Bond and Doug
Bond for use of their VRA Reader Data.
Similarly, I was also a Visiting Scholar at the European University at St.
Petersburg, Russia, during the fall 2001 semester. I thank Ted Hopf, Eduard Ponarin,
Nikita Lomagin, Pavel Lyssakov, and Milanna Streltsina for early discussions on the
6
nature of post-communist Russia. Thanks also to Shauna Gamache for a timely airport
rescue. At EUSP, Milanna Streltsina, Lena Batienko, Olga Kobizeva, Anna Lichtenstein,
and Anna Tolkachova performed the thankless task of conducting intercoder reliability
tests for the computer-assisted content analysis employed here.
I also incurred numerous debts during my field research in Moscow and St.
Petersburg. I have respected the wishes of my interviewees to maintain their anonymity. I
would, however, like to thank all of the journalists, human rights activists, state officials,
and scholars who graciously agreed to be interviewed or who provided invaluable
insights and documents. Financial support from the Peace Studies Program and the
Institute for European Studies made this field research possible.
For reading various drafts or enduring conversations with me, I thank Richard
Bensel, Jeffrey Checkel, Jeff Legro, Ted Hopf, Steve Watts, and Pavel Baev. Thanks also
to Barak Mendelsohn, Mark Anner, Kevin Strompf, Karthika Sasikumar and Kate Gordy
for helpful comments on a rough draft of chapter one. Special thanks also go to Will
Lowe, Normand Péladeau, and Kimberly Neuendorf, for helpful discussions on CATA.
Normand also deserves special thanks for “encouraging” Wordstat to read Cyrillic text.
At SWAMOS, I thank Richard Betts, Eliot Cohen, and especially Stephen Biddle, Todd
Lowery, and Major Isaiah Wilson for discussions on the nature of strategy and how to
study it.
Scholarship can be a solitary endeavor, but it need not be a lonely one. I thank
Kevin Strompf, Israel and Ronit Waismel-Manor, Brian Bow, Dan Sherman, Syd van
Morgan, Il-Hyun Cho, Seo Hyun Park, Dev Gupta, Stephanie Hoffman, Barak
Mendelsohn, and Maria Zaitseva for keeping me reasonably sane. The late Bernie
“60/40” Milton and Dr. Funk Dubious were godsends during my Ithaca days; the Station
for Innovation, indeed. At my new home, Princeton University, I thank Gary Bass, Nancy
Bermeo, Tom Christensen, Christina Davis, John Ikenberry, Andy Moravcsik, Sankur
7
Muthu, Jennifer Pitts, Grigore Pop-Eleches, Kris Ramsay, Anne-Marie Slaughter, Julie
Taylor, Jessica Trounstine, Joshua Tucker, and Lynn White for such a warm welcome.
My family has also been a constant source of support over the years. Though
separated by long distances, my Mom Helen and brother Matt sent encouragement and
care packages that helped smooth over some of the rougher spots of grad school.
This dissertation is partly inspired by the memory of the very, very dark pod''ezd
at Ulitsa Chaikovskovo, Dom 61, St. Petersburg – the scene of a polite robbery.
I dedicate this dissertation to Grace E. Lyall. It probably isn’t enough to note that
I owe her just about everything, but it’s still true.
Note on transliteration: I have followed the U.S. Library of Congress system (no
diacritical marks) with the exception of well-known places and individuals where such
usage would cause confusion (i.e. Yeltsin, Chechnya, Soviet).
8
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH
Jason M.K. Lyall was born on 19 November 1975 in Vancouver, B.C., Canada. A
product of Canada’s public school system, he received his Bachelor of Arts (History and
Political Science) from Simon Fraser University in 1998. That same year, he enrolled in
the Department of Government’s Ph.D. program at Cornell University. He received his
Master of Arts in 2001 and his Ph.D. in 2005. During his sojourn through graduate
school, he was a Visiting Scholar at the European University at St. Petersburg, Russia, as
well as an Exchange Scholar at Harvard University (twice). In July 2004, he joined the
faculty of the Department of Politics and the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton
University.
9
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Paths of Ruin: Why Revisionist States Arise and Die in World Politics
Page
1 Ghost in the Machine: Patterns in the Study and Practice 1
of Revisionism 2 Paths of Ruin: Why Revisionist States Arise and Die in World Politics 54 3 Running to Stand Still: The Revisionism of France (1848-71) and 113
Pakistan (1947-71) Compared 4 July Days, July Storms: French (1816-48) and Soviet (1917-45) 192
Grand Strategies Compared 5 On the Path to Ruin? Postcommunist Russia as a Potential Revisionist 237 6 The Once and Future Great Power: Identity and Strategy in Yeltsin’s 250 Russia, 1993-1999 7 A New Potemkin Village? The Instability of Stability in Putin’s Russia, 322 2000-2004 8 Conclusion 411 Appendix I A Word About Words: How the 433
Content Analysis was Conducted Appendix II Coding Event Data 452 Bibliography 456
10
LIST OF TABLES 1.1: A Comparison of Death Rates Between Revisionist and 38
Status Quo States, 1793-2000.
1.2: Revisionist States and Their Relative Share of System 40
Capabilities, 1815-1993. 3.1: The Second Empire (1848-71) and Pakistan (1947-71) Compared 106 3.2: French and Pakistani National Capabilities as a Percentage 107
of Systemic Capabilities 3.3: A Comparison of Projected and Actual Electoral Returns in 165
Pakistan’s General Election, December 1970 4.1: France (1817-1847) and the Soviet Union (1917-45) Compared 179 4.2: French and Soviet National Capabilities as a Percentage 181
of Systemic Capabilities 4.3: Secret Police Arrests, 1929-39 (By Alleged Crime) 202 4.4: A Comparison of Red Army and Wehrmacht Forces on the 214
Eve of Battle (1941) 6.1: Standardized Frequency of Identity Categories in Official Rhetoric, 236
1993-1999 6.2: Type and Frequency of Key Attributes for Dominant Identities, 238
1993-1999 6.3: Russian Views of the International “Game,” 1993-1999 243 6.4: Grievances Against the International System, 1993-1999 248 6.5: Internal Enemies: A Question of Scapegoating? (1993-1999) 253 6.6: Theory of Action: Relative Salience of Preferences Over Strategies, 256
1993-1999 6.7: Strength of Association Between Identity Type 263
and Grievance Type, 1993-1999 6.8: An Uphill Climb: Perceptions of Regime Legitimacy, 1992-1999 268
11
6.9: Russia’s Revisionist Acts in Comparative Perspective, by Type, 291 1992-1999 7.1: Standardized Frequency of Identity Categories in Official Rhetoric, 304
January 2000 to May 2004 7.2: Type and Frequency of Key Attributes for Dominant Identities, 306
2000-2004 7.3: Russian Views of the International “Game,” 2000-2004 312 7.4: Grievances Against the International System, 2000-2004 315 7.5: Internal Enemies: The New “Wreckers?” (2000-2004) 320 7.6: Theory of Action: Relative Salience of Preferences Over Strategies, 323
2000-2004
7.7: Strength of Association Between Identity Type 324 and Grievance Type, 1993-1999
7.8: Comparison of State Interference in Journalist Activities, 2000-2003 340 7.9: Russia’s Revisionist Acts in Comparative Perspective, by Type, 370 2000-2003 AI.1: Pearson’s r Coefficients for Pairwise Intercoder Reliability 412 AI.2: Two-Tailed t Test of Paired Coder Reliability 413 AII.1: Measures for Degree of Revisionism 423 AII.2: Measures for Degree of Status Quo Behavior 424
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1
Ghost in the Machine: Patterns in the Study and Practice of Revisionism
No one understands the diplomatic strategy of a state if he
does not understand its regime, if he has not studied the philosophy of those who govern it.1
History’s graveyard is choked with the remains of revisionist Powers that failed in
their violent efforts to recast the international status quo. The trail of devastation and
upheaval that has attended the rise of revisionist states such as Napoleonic France and
Nazi Germany underscore their clear importance as subjects of study. Concerns about
rising revisionists are not confined to the past, however. A surging China, a rapidly
growing India, and a possibly resurgent Russia all point to the continued relevance of the
dangers posed by dissatisfied states. Nor, as the post-Cold War security landscape has
demonstrated, is revisionism the sole preserve of Great Powers. Much of the 1990s, for
example, was spent addressing the threats posed by regional revisionist powers like Iraq,
Serbia, Iran, and North Korea. In a word, revisionist states are the “ghost in the machine”
of world politics: they not only create the fear of predation that turn the wheels of
international anarchy but also unleash the violence that often leads to the breakdown of
international order.
Yet, for all their importance, we have few dedicated studies of why these states
emerge and, equally as important, why they fail in their bids. To that end, this dissertation
asks: Why do revisionist states arise and die in world politics? I argue that the origins of
revisionism lie not in shifting relative power balances or economic growth rates but in the
nature of a regime’s collective identity project. All revisionist states share a common
ideational trait: their regimes rely upon exclusionary and often fragmented identity
1 Aron 1966: 600.
13
projects to legitimate their rule at home and abroad. Regimes can find, however, that they
are entrapped into pursuing increasingly risky acts of revisionism by the need to cement
and then maintain popular allegiance. Identity projects have path dependent properties,
and regimes find their strategic choice sets narrowing over time as they are forced to
maintain consistency between their prior rhetoric and current actions. This identity
commitment locks a regime onto “paths of ruin” where the demands of regime survival
come to trump state security. Regimes are therefore left with perverse incentives to
escalate conflicts to score gains even as military effectiveness and strategic logic is
sacrificed to secure the regime’s position.
To date, our theories have cast revisionism largely as a function of opportunity
rather than need. Realists have pointed to shifts in the structure of international politics –
usually relative military capacity or economic performance – as the source of a state’s
revisionist ambitions. For their part, rationalists maintain that uncertainties over an
opponent’s resolve or capabilities (or both) can drive states into mistaken revisionist
adventures. Each approach should be well-placed to explain the rise and demise of
revisionist states. Take realism, for example. Much of its central precepts about the nature
of interstate relations are in fact derived from observations about the behavior of
revisionists and the dangers they pose. Revisionists are thought to generate the fear (and
the reality) of destruction that makes anarchy so dangerous and realpolitik strategies
necessary for security, if not survival. Revisionists are the model “realist” state: driven by
cost-benefit calculation, opportunity-seeking, and realpolitik practicing.
The issue of why states pursue revisionism is similarly an ideal test case for
rationalist models. Arguing that states are utility-maximizing actors, this approach is
especially well-suited to situations where the stakes and costs are high and where the
permissive nature of anarchy imposes few constraints on decision-making. Revisionism
clearly falls within these scope conditions. Rational choice perspectives would therefore
14
cast revisionism as a function of cost-benefit calculations made under conditions of less-
than-perfect information.
Though revisionist states represent a “most likely” 2 case for existing approaches,
there are at least three shortcomings in these conventional accounts. First, these theories
make extensive use of the distinction between status quo and revisionist states without
recognizing that this distinction is in fact a tacit identity variable. These theories of state
behavior rely heavily on pre-given and fixed identities to generate predictions about state
behavior. Much of the work in these ostensibly structural theories is therefore being done
by a variable that remains “bracketed” and outside either realism’s or rationalism’s
theoretical lens.
This reliance on a tacit variable creates important anomalies in these theories: the
security dilemma, for example, has variable effects depending on the type of actors
involved, 3 while international systems dominated by offensive weapons are less war
prone than similar systems populated by revisionist states.4 I argue that this identity
variable can provide the foundation for an alternative conception of revisionist states, one
that finds the impetus for such acts in the nature of a regime’s collective identity. In
effect, this status quo/revisionist variable underpins nearly all structural accounts of state
behavior, providing a unique “core” variable from which to construct an alternative
theory of international security.
Second, existing explanations of state behavior tend to privilege proximate causes
rather than long-term, perhaps slowly-unfolding, processes.5 A narrow focus on short-
term changes in a state’s opportunities and constraints will lead to reliance on research
designs that neglect or otherwise dismiss the possibility that the cause of revisionism is
2 Eckstein 1975: 119-20. The selection of cases that most favor alternative theories is meant to facilitate a “fair, causal comparison” among competing explanations. See Miller 1987: 155-225. 3 Jervis 1978: 174-79; Kydd 1997: 114-51; Glaser 1997: 171-201. 4 See in particular Van Evera 1999: 123-27, 152-159. 5 Pierson 2004: 79-102.
15
actually rooted in the past. If we unnecessarily crop our analyses of revisionism, for
example, we might treat these long-term processes as constant or fixed, thereby missing
the underlying dynamic at work. We need to be open to the possibility that action at a
distance – here, the creation of an identity project – can determine subsequent foreign
policy over time.6 Put differently, if revisionism is the result of a long-term, self-
reinforcing and ultimately cumulative process – as argued here – then the causes
privileged by existing accounts may be either insignificant or merely symptoms of a
dynamic process that unfolds over years. We need films, rather than snapshots, if we are
to capture how collective identity shapes a regime’s propensity for revisionism across
time.
Third, because existing approaches have such a narrow temporal focus, they miss
how the nature of a regime’s collective identity impacts its grand strategy. Revisionists
“die” at such high rates historically (see below) because their collective identities
undermine both grand strategy and military effectiveness, a variable often overlooked in
security studies.7 Concern over domestic legitimacy can compel a regime to turn its
military inward, for example, forcing it to lag behind external rivals. In other situations,
more appropriate strategies such as backing down in a crisis may be ruled politically
impossible by dint of the regime’s prior rhetoric, forcing it to rely upon brinkmanship and
escalation.
Seeking to “gamble for resurrection,”8 an entrapped regime often places its faith
(and fate) in the hands of unrealistic offensive doctrines that disregard unfavorable force
ratios or the prospects of a balancing coalition. Contrary to existing rationalist bargaining
models of war, the provision of new information may not lead to a resolution of a crisis
6 Hedstrom and Swedberg 1998 contend that explanations should privilege “local” causes and argue against the possibility of action at a distance. 7 On the need to study variation in military effectiveness, see Biddle 2004: 48-51; Biddle and Long 2004: 525-46; Brooks 2003: 149-53; Rosen 1995: 5-31. 8 Downs and Rocke 1994: 362-80; Goemans 2000: 39-44.
16
but rather to the opposite result: an escalation of ambitions and the reinforcement of this
gambling logic. Regime death is often the result of these gambling strategies.
As this dissertation will demonstrate, revisionism is thus best conceptualized as an
identity-driven process that begins unfolding once a collective identity is created for
legitimacy. Revisionists, perhaps the consummate “realist” states, are therefore driven by
ideational factors that not only explain their emergence but also account for their
downfall. Far from an idiosyncratic process, these “paths to ruin” are robust and
generalizable, providing a compelling alternative account to existing realist and
rationalist explanations of revisionism.9 Before outlining the argument in detail, however,
we must first define revisionism.
WHAT IS A REVISIONIST STATE?
The distinction between revisionist and status quo actors has been a common
feature of inter-national relations theorizing since at least E.H. Carr’s seminal The Twenty
Years’ Crisis.10 Yet we have devoted surprisingly little attention to devising clear
theoretical criteria for distinguishing within and among these actor types. Indeed, reliance
on “obvious” cases of revisionist states such as Napoleonic France or Nazi Germany has
meant that the problem of concept formation was sidestepped. Absent clear rules for
identifying these actors, however, we risk drawing biased samples that reduce our ability
9 Put differently, the unintended consequences that arise from commitment to an exclusive identity (including military deficiencies) cannot be dismissed as “noise” because they are not randomly distributed. Instead, these dysfunctions cluster in predictable ways depending on the nature of a regime’s collective identity project. 10 A more complete review of existing definitions and empirical measures is found in Lyall 2001. See Carr 1946 [1939]: 103-05; Morgenthau 1973 [1948]: 40-74; Wolfers 1962: 81-102; Kissinger 1957. The proliferation of labels to denote the revisionist state has also reduced the clarity of existing definitions. Various labels include: imperialist (Morgenthau 1948); dissatisfied (Carr 1945); revolutionary (Kissinger 1957; Walt 1996); “greedy” (Glaser 1997); power-maximizers in Schweller 1998; “rogue” states (Litwak 2000); and near peer competitor (Szayna 2002).
17
to derive valid generalizations and causal inferences about the origins of revisionist
states.11
As a consequence, we lack clear indicators of revisionism. Some definitions, for
example, equate revisionism with the initiation of war, and then define revisionists as
states that initiate war. More often, however, existing research relies on types of behavior
that are not exclusive to revisionist states. Randall Schweller’s treatment of the
revisionist state relies on predatory bandwagoning as evidence of revisionist intent. Yet
there is no reason why a status quo state could not engage in identical behavior.12
Similarly, the use of arms racing and alignment with the dominant power (an “alliance
portfolio”) is problematic since neither measure is necessarily indicative of revisionist
intent.13 Massive arms expenditures could be the result of unrelated bureaucratic politics
or internal balancing by a status quo state alarmed at the rise of a revisionist state. And
alignment with the dominant power reveals little about the purpose of such an alliance,
which could range from defensive to offensive and expansionist motives. Indeed, there is
no reason to assume a priori that a dominant power is more satisfied with the status quo
than other states.
An ideal set of indicators of revisionism would encompass a wide range of actions
short of war that are available to a revisionist for challenging an existing order. Some
leverage on this problem is provided by Iain Johnston’s efforts to construct measures that
indicate whether a state is intent on revising a given status quo. These indicators center
around: (1) the rate and quality of a state’s participation in international organizations,
including whether it abides by or tries to undermine existing rules and norms; and (2) a
11 Sartori 1970; Collier and Mahon 1993. 12 Similarly, his distinction between ‘security-seekers’ (status quo) and ‘power-maximizers’ (revisionists) is difficult to measure empirically. See Schweller 1998: 46, 65-83 and Schroeder 1994. 13 Werner and Kugler 1996. See Bueno de Mesquita 1975; Kim 1991, 1992, 1996; Signorino and Ritter 1999.
18
clear preference for the radical redistribution of the material balance of power that the
state then acts upon with military force.14
Offering an excellent starting point for discussion, these measures can be
supplemented with three additional indicators. As demonstrated below, a revisionist can
be defined as an actor that seeks to challenge at least one constituent aspect of a given
international order, including: (1) criteria for inclusion within international society or its
privileged in-group; (2) the rules that govern the use of force against in-group members;
and (3) the existing hierarchy of that in-group, whether cast in terms of material power or
the language of relative status. A revisionist can therefore be marked by the following
three indicators:
1. The actor has a clear preference for radically recasting the shared standards that govern membership in the international community. For example, an actor may pose a normative challenge to the system and its leading members by seeking to replace dynastic principles of legitimacy with nationalism. 2. The actor has not internalized the shared set of rules governing what constitutes the “appropriate” use of violence in a given international order. As such, the actor deems it acceptable to violate norms regulating when, why, and how much military force can be legitimately employed in international affairs.
3. The actor has a clear preference for recasting either the existing material balance of power (defined by relative military capabilities) or the prestige hierarchy.
I draw these indicators from my conception of an international status quo, which
is defined here as a set of regularized expectations about, and patterns of, behavior among
members of a political community. Drawing on English School notions of an
international society, I argue that a status quo is composed of three constituent parts.15
14 Johnston 2003: 11-12. 15 Bukovansky 2002; Reus-Smit 1999; Hurd 1999; Gong 1984; Bull and Watson 1984; Bull 1977.
19
First, all international orders are defined by normative standards that outline the
type of actors that are deemed legitimate members of the community. As Bukovansky
notes, all international orders have a political culture that establishes a “common
denominator” for how authority is legitimated between actors as well as within them.16 In
our era, the constitutive norm of sovereignty acts to define states as the legitimate vessel
for political authority. Similarly, each era has articulated a clear set of legitimating
frameworks – absolutism, nationalism, or theocracy, for example – that set the limits for
the types of actors that will be welcomed into international society. Contemporary
concern with “rogue” states such as Iran and North Korea are grounded largely in the
recognition that these states are legitimated domestically by collective identities
considered “inappropriate” by the leading members of international society. To be sure,
most international orders are not marked by total uniformity of actor type.17 Nonetheless,
despite the presence of variety, each international status quo has been underpinned by a
fair degree of agreement about the identities of in-group members and “non-civilized”
deviants.18
Note, however, that I make no claims about how “thick” these shared rules and
norms are, nor about how deeply socialized members are into upholding them. Indeed,
the durability or fragility of a given order, and the depth of commitment to it, should be
an empirical question rather than a theoretical assumption.19 On the other hand, I do
argue that international orders are stable enough, and these norms and rules shared
enough, to be considered a “status quo.” Even the asocial world of Hobbesian anarchy 16 Bukovansky 2002: 7-12. 17 Simpson 2004: 227-53. On heterogeneous and homogenous international societies, see Aron 1960. 18 On the “standard of civilization,” see Gong 1984. 19 Wendt 1999: 246-312. Holsti 1970: 243 contends that international order is too “thin” to support a sense of community and stable role conceptions. Interestingly, the “thickness” of shared norms and rules may shape the degree of difficulty a revisionist state might encounter when challenging the status quo. A “thin” system, for example, may be marked by a higher degree of buck-passing and bandwagoning in the face of a revisionist state than a more “mature” international society.
20
comprises, in the words of game theory, a “common knowledge space” that is sufficient
to shape actor expectations and behavior.
Moreover, it does not follow that deviations from these shared norms overturn the
idea that an international society does in fact exist. No norm enjoys perfect compliance.
Indeed, norms are often subject to continual, if gradual, renegotiation, and so it is
unrealistic to expect that international society is static or that in-group membership does
not evolve over time. That said, however, it is clear that periods of what we might call
“normative flux” do pose a problem for the sociological view of international order and
revisionism adopted here. Indeed, certain historical eras, notably after a Great Power war,
will be marked by a high degree of uncertainty over the basic rules of the newly emerging
game. In such an environment, norms of membership and rules of conduct may not yet be
stable or accepted enough for us to judge what constitutes deviation. There will be eras,
then, where the approach outlined here has less explanatory leverage because old norms
are being replaced but new ones have yet to be accepted, shared, and internalized. Such
eras are, however, historically rare.20
Second, each international order has shared rules and norms that govern the use of
military force. These “rules of the game” establish limits to both the scale of violence and
the purposes for which can be legitimately wielded. Historically, each international order
has been defined by why states fight, reasons that are stable within a particular era but not
across them. Wars for dynastic reasons and for territory dominated the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries, respectively, but are now viewed as (nearly) illegitimate.21
Similarly, each status quo has witnessed efforts to limit the scale of violence, whether
20 The immediate aftermath of the Second World War is one example, where the old order had clearly broken down but emerging dividing lines and ideologies had not yet hardened into a new status quo. See Ikenberry 2001 for a study of rule creation after three historical “breakpoints.” 21 See Sarkees, Wayman and Signer 2003 and Holsti 1991: 306-28 for variations in patterns of violence across time. For historical treatments, see Finnemore 2003; Sofka 2000; Kaiser 1988; Luard 1986: 83-131; Bozeman 1960.
21
prohibitions took the form of limits on the use of crossbows or nuclear weapons.22 These
shared rules therefore imply some form of self-limiting, if only minimal, toward other
community members but do not hold in warfare with “outsiders.”
Violations of these norms by Great Powers against other Great Powers is
especially dangerous given the amount of material resources commanded by each party.
Revisionism by lesser Powers can nonetheless also have precedent-setting impact, even if
such revisionism is confined to action against other lesser states. Such violations often do
not weaken the balance of power or, if they do, the impact is minimal. Instead, these
deviations can weaken the ties of mutual restraint and sense of obligation that bind
together the in-group. In fact, such rule-breaking can open the door to future violations
and a reordering of the system itself as one-time deviations diffuse across actors. This is
particularly likely if such deviations confer advantages in wartime, leading to a normative
“tip” in which the rules of in-group warfare are rewritten. Note that this “tip” may be
positive in a normative sense: it is possible, for example, that a “good” revisionist state
can arise by promoting new limitations on conflict. One could imagine that a state
seeking to construct a multilateral security order in the seventeenth century – or to
abolish landmines today – could be labeled a “revisionist” if the changes were
fundamental enough to affect the constitutive principles of the existing order.
This view of a status quo as a normative order shapes how we define revisionism.
Most notably, the concept of a revisionist, as well as the practice of revisionism, only
acquires meaning in the context of the prevailing rules, norms, and institutions that
govern a particular order. Our definition of revisionist is therefore context-specific and
must reference in part the shared rules of a given era, reducing its generalizability across
22 Price and Tannenwald 1996: 114-52. On the nuclear weapons taboo, see Tannenwald 1999: 433-68.
22
time.23 War between Europeans and Native Americans, for example, appears odd if cast
in the language of revisionists and status quo actors since there were no shared standards
or boundaries governing the use of violence that could be breached (at least initially).
Similarly, the rules that governed violence and community membership have shifted
considerably over time: the eighteenth century, where all states were driven by an
“ambition for primacy,” contrasts sharply with our own, where interstate violence is
fairly rare. Put differently, a state that rapaciously pursued conquest, even to the point of
overrunning its own capacities, would be a status quo actor in the eighteenth century but
a clear revisionist state in the twentieth century.
The third key aspect of an international order is its hierarchy, whether rooted in
relative material strength or in status (or some combination). These types of challenges fit
most comfortably in existing neorealist definitions of a revisionist state. Crucially,
however, efforts to overturn the pecking order of a particular status quo are perhaps the
least “revisionist” actions that can be pursued by a would-be revisionist state. Despite the
violence that often accompanies such efforts, the aim of improving a state’s material
position or its prestige suggests that the actor is not seeking to overturn the normative
order. Rather, the actor’s focus is on improving its position within that order, meaning
that the rules for membership and for in-group conduct will probably go unchallenged.
To do so, after all, would mean a dismantling of the very order that the actor is trying to
improve its position within. It is possible, however, that a normative change at the
constitutive level could arise even if such a change was unintended by the actor. A shift
in the balance of power could, for example, “tip” a system in a different direction if the
legitimating principles of the new leading state departed from the prevailing standard.
23 Even rationalists like Bennett and Stam 2004: 196-97 recognize the need to ground studies of conflict in era. On the need to combine structural accounts with an understanding of actor preferences, see Morrow 1988. See also Katznelson 2003.
23
These three measures provide us with a scale of the severity of a revisionist’s
challenge to the international order. The most severe challenge an actor could pose would
be to overturn the legitimating principles of the society itself, that is, the criteria by which
membership in the “club” was defined. This would break all norms governing what an
actor can fight for since it would result in a reordering of the way in which legitimate
authority is defined and granted in the system. Revising these norms would, in effect,
result in a change of system since it would reshape the boundaries of the in-group itself
while recasting notions of the appropriate ways in which an actor legitimates itself.24
Violations of the limits on the use of force, or the types of appropriate weapons
and tactics, would represent the next most severe challenge to an international order.
Such violations need not lead ultimately to a change of the entire system, but might begin
a process of normative diffusion whereby prior normative constraints begin to break
down.25 Finally, the least severe challenge – though not necessarily in terms of bloodshed
and destruction – is one in which the revisionist stays within the existing normative
framework as it works to recast the existing hierarchy. We can imagine that one such
revisionist could be Great Power that is driven by a desire to acquire a greater share of an
excludable good, whether measured in terms of territory, prestige, or “power” more
generally. An actor could also aim at a more narrow revision of an existing regional,
rather than global, order.
Given the expansive nature of these revisionist challenges, it is important to
bound the scope of the study. We are concerned here with states that pursue campaigns of
revisionism, not one-time transgressions that are opportunistic in nature. Indeed, these
“opportunistic revisionists” are perhaps most easily explained by rationalist cost-benefit
analyses. Moreover, they are difficult to generalize from, given that there are literally
24 Ruggie 1993: 163 refers to these types of wars as “constitutive” (change of system) rather than “configurative” (change within system). 25 Iraq’s use of ballistic missiles and chemical weapons in the 1980-88 war with Iran is one example of such conceptual innovation. See Hoyt 2003: 179-201.
24
dozens of reasons why states might pursue one-time revisionism if there are gains to be
had and few costs to be borne.
It is also possible that a state might be labeled as a revisionist without breaking
rules governing in-group conduct. The state’s legitimacy, or domestic behavior, might
violate shared standards, leading other states to identify it as a “rogue” without it
necessarily pursuing a revisionist policy. The current National Security Strategy of the
United States (2002), for example, defines “rogue” states not so much on the basis of
their behavior as their domestic practices and threatened external behavior.26 Given that
we are interested in explaining revisionist behavior, these actors are not included here
either, though they doubtless play a key role in maintaining the boundaries of
international society through their example.27
We can therefore best conceptualize revisionism as a family of strategies that span
from the clandestine undermining of existing rules and institutions – “foot-dragging,” 28
in James Scott’s term – to open protest to the initiation of disputes short of war. This
expansive view of revisionism is not only closer to empirical reality but also enables us to
increase the total number of observations of the dependent variable, a key attribute given
how rare war is between Great Powers. It also has the advantage of opening new sources
of data, such as the automated coding of daily events, to the researcher (see Chapters Six
and Seven).29
Adopting a broader view of revisionism also enables us to detail how actors can
use asymmetrical strategies to overcome their weakness and challenge the system. To
date, there has been a surprising neglect of such strategies; most efforts continue to
collapse a state’s possible strategies into either “balancing” or “bandwagoning,” a
26 The National Security Strategy of the United States of America (2002), 14. 27 While this is true theoretically, it is likely that prior behavior played a key role in earning a state its label as a “rogue” state. 28 Scott 1985: 29-34, 251-55. 29 Keohane, King, and Verba 1994: 28-31. On the use of event data analysis, see King and Lowe 2003.
25
distinction that does little to capture the array of strategies available. This is especially
true of current debates over the durability of an American-led order, where most analysts
still dismiss anything less than a Fulda Gap-sized invasion as mere “soft balancing.”30
In point of fact, however, would-be revisionists can engage in what biologists
refer to as “niche specialization” – that is, the development of tactics and practices that
specifically target the vulnerabilities of competitors in an ecosystem.31 Such efforts
typically generate feedback effects that shape how other actors, even dominant ones,
must adapt their own strategies in response; witness, for example, the debate over how to
transform the American military in light of non-state threats. As a result, even “weak”
revisionists such as a nuclear-armed Pakistan can wreak tremendous havoc on a regional
or even international order.
Perhaps the most distinctive aspect of revisionism is its risky nature.32 More
specifically, a revisionist is marked by a persistent preference across time for high-risk,
high-gain strategies. Given this inherent risk, it is perhaps unsurprising that revisionism is
associated with a high probability of producing suboptimal outcomes, including regime
death, state collapse, or military defeat. Yet we cannot use these outcomes to assess the
suboptimal nature of a policy without risking tautology. So, I propose instead a set of
indicators that can be used to distinguish between revisionist and status quo policies
independent of outcomes.
First, a regime bent on revisionism is likely to less selective than status quo actors
in its choice of targets. Revisionists are thus prone to challenging coalitions rather than
30 On soft-balancing, see Wohlforth 2004: 214-38. Much of the recent literature on American grand strategy discounts any foreign policy action short of balancing as immaterial. See Dueck 2004; Bacevich 2003; Brown 2003; Wohlforth 1999. 31 Day, Laland and Odling-Smee 2003: 80-95. 32 “Risk” here refers to both political risk (the probability that policy choices will adversely affect regime’s political fortunes) and policy risk (the probability that the policy itself will fail). See Lamborn 1990: 57-59. Policy failure is itself a continuum. A battlefield disaster could be a political success, for example, or it could temporarily staunch the loss of authority/legitimacy, or it could accelerate further erosion, or it could topple the regime itself.
26
being deterred, and consequently are likely to possess higher rates of military defeats than
status quo actors. Similarly, a potential revisionist is less likely to be deterred by
unfavorable force ratios or relative capabilities. Second, actors with revisionist ambitions
are more likely to escalate rather than retrench their aims when presented with new
information about their bargaining position. This gambler’s logic tends to produce
policies that require an investment of resources that is disproportionate to the intrinsic
value of the issue at stake. Third, revisionist actors are more likely to become enmeshed
in enduring rivalries that yield above average rates of participation in interstate disputes.
Potential indicators of revisionism must also deal with the problem of mixed
strategies and, indeed, deception on the part of the revisionist. It is probable, for example,
that a state will exhibit revisionist measures on some indicators (say, issuing threats to a
rival) and pro-status quo (it maintains membership in an international organization, for
example) on others. A reasonable solution to this dilemma is to use multiple indicators
and then weight them for the degree of challenge across different contexts. On balance,
how consistent, intense, and multi-faceted are the challenges that a would-be revisionist
is issuing to the status quo and its defenders? Such a schema allows for a more fine-
grained view of a revisionist strategy than an aggregate category such as balancing (see
Chapters Six and Seven).
THE ARGUMENT
At its core, I argue that the demands of regime survival, and not state security or
the “national interest,” drive the pursuit of revisionism. A move away from a state-centric
theoretical framework in turn allows us to acknowledge the possibility that the interests
and needs of the regime and its state may not coincide; indeed, they may be sharply at
odds. Placing the regime at the center of the analysis also allows us to construct a more
dynamic conception of the sources of state behavior. In essence, the regime’s structural
27
position as a pivot between international and domestic arenas enables us to collapse the
artificial distinction that too often divides the study of these areas.33
All regimes must therefore work to ensure their survival by successfully
navigating the cross-cutting currents generated by dint of being enmeshed in these two
realms simultaneously. And, in particular, a regime must construct and maintain a
collective identity that legitimates its rule in the eyes of both a domestic audience and
international society. To date, the few existing regime-centered studies of foreign policy
have excluded the role played by legitimacy concerns and ideational variables such as
collective identity.34 I argue instead that such factors provide the foundation of an
alternative explanation, namely, that the origins of revisionism lie in the content of a
regime’s identity project.
A focus on the regime, though a welcome analytic move, cannot by itself tell us
how what strategies it will adopt to ensure its survival. Instead, we need to examine the
content of its identity project, which is defined as the bundle of different identities and
symbols that the regime uses for the purpose of legitimating its rule. Not all identities are
equally represented in this “bundle,” however. A bundle has its own internal hierarchy,
where the identities and symbols that comprise the bundle’s content are ranked according
to their salience to the regime’s identity-building efforts. The difficulty lies in
consolidating and maintaining this identity bundle as the basis of rule until its content
becomes “natural” for the citizens or subjects of a state. This process is intensely political
and often violent, and the regime cannot be assured of winning such a struggle.35
33 Putnam 1988: 427-60; Werner, Davis, and Bueno de Mesquita 2003: 1-7. 34 Bueno de Mesquita et al,. 2003: 74-75. Affinity and loyalty to a leader are viewed here as cemented by the provision of private goods and the costs of defecting to a new leader, not to normative judgments about the appropriateness of a regime’s rule or to non-material criteria for judging a leader more generally. 35 Even civic identities that characterize liberal democracies have roots in exclusionary identity practices imposed through violence. See Marx 2003: 73-112. Governments can of course use less coercive means to construct collective identities. See for example Leheny 2003.
28
Once established, though, this identity project conditions the type of commitments
that the regime must uphold and the nature of its choice set, that is, the strategies that it
can use abroad to safeguard its rule at home. As a consequence, some regimes may find
themselves unexpectedly entrapped into pursuing aims with flawed means because the
menu of politically acceptable strategies has narrowed precipitously over time.
Not all identities have the same probability of forcing a regime to consider and
pursue a path of revisionism, however. Identities vary along at least two dimensions: their
degree of exclusivity and the degree of coherence. Exclusivity refers to the extent to
which a regime creates and mobilizes collective sentiment by scapegoating against either
a domestic or external foe. Unity and allegiance to the regime are thus fostered by a more
or less systematic effort to identify, classify, and exclude either an internal group or an
external threat – which may be a norm, set of values, or another state. The more frequent
and intense such invective is, the greater the exclusivity a regime’s identity project is said
to possess. History is littered with examples, ranging from the early state-building
projects of Western Europe to the Nazi and Imperial Japanese projects of the mid-
twentieth century and the religious designs of the Taliban and Al Qaeda in our own
time.36
The second dimension of identity, coherence, captures the extent to which the
constituent parts of the identity bundle generate complementary or competing behavioral
expectations. A project marked by a high degree of fragmentation will, for example, pull
a regime in several directions as it seeks to assuage the expectations raised among
different constituencies by its own rhetoric. Indeed, regimes can fall victim to their own
efforts to appease everyone: Napoleon III’s regime, to cite one example, was destroyed
by his inability to reconcile competing demands raised by his reliance on a contradictory
mixture of conservative, religious, liberal, and revolutionary principles. Some identity
36 See for example Buruma and Margalit 2004; Marx 2003: 3-32.
29
projects, however, will be marked by greater coherence. In such cases, multiple identity
strands will interlock and reinforce one another, creating a stable set of expectations
about what constitutes the appropriate strategies for the regime to adopt.
One important example of such an identity project is that of the Sun King, Louis
XIV, in France (1661-1715). He sought to secure his place at home and abroad using
exclusivist Catholic markers with an emphasis on loyalty to his dynasty and its constant
accretion of gloire (glory). The combination of a desire to expand Catholic lands and to
bolster the grandeur of France in turn created an expectation of constant military
victories, a sentiment that Louis XIV did his best to honor. At war for most of his reign,
Louis XIV would ultimately dissipate the economic and military strength of his French
state over the course of four major wars.37
The cautionary tale of Louis XIV underscores that revisionism is associated with
the use of an exclusive identity for legitimization purposes. Why? Every regime has an
ideational center of gravity created by the content and salience of the markers that
comprise its identity bundle. Regimes are therefore especially sensitive to criticism that
calls attention to either inconsistencies or hypocrisy in the fulfillment of expectations
created by key tenets of the identity project. Exclusive identities by definition are more
prone to generating opposition by groups that are threatened by the regime’s rhetoric and
policies. As such, the regime must work harder to institutionalize its project in the face of
either domestic or external resistance. Revisionism can, under these circumstances, prove
an appealing means to score victories that will persuade or silence these critics. The
probability of a revisionist path being adopted is particularly high if the project is
exclusive and fragmented. In such cases, obvious contradictions in the regime’s project
enable domestic opposition to mobilize faster, creating greater pressure on the regime to
solve its problems through external violence.
37 Lynn 1994: 178-204. Phillip II’s “bid for mastery” is another important example. See Parker 2000 and Stein and Stein 2003.
30
Quite clearly, then, these collective identities have path dependent properties.38
Initial returns, together with the hopes of scoring more gains in the consolidation of
legitimacy, act to reinforce a regime’s commitment to the maintenance of its particular
project. Visible contradictions in rhetorical claims, or between rhetoric and actions, are
dangerous for a regime because they threaten to impose serious costs in the form of
eroded legitimacy and heightened mobilization by domestic opposition. As the grooves of
this path become ever deeper, however, the choices available to a regime become
increasingly rigid and narrow; the path dependent logic of identities not only “lock-in”
certain actions but also “lock-out” other, perhaps more suitable, strategies. Faced with the
need to consolidate its legitimacy, a regime may be faced with increasing opposition and
decreasing choices; in short, the regime has become entrapped by its own rhetorical
claims.
There are at least two principal entrapment mechanisms. First, efforts to
institutionalize an identity project can spark counter-mobilization through what I call the
“spotlight effect.” Using the regime’s own rhetoric as a focal point to facilitate collective
action, anti-regime opposition can arise in a bid to force either (1) the regime to fulfill its
rhetorical commitments or (2) to advocate the revision or abandonment of the current
project. In either situation, the regime must reinforce its commitment to the project,
usually by means of some form of public display, if it is to prevent further erosion of its
authority. The more glaring the contradictions within its rhetoric or between rhetoric and
action, the faster opposition can rally support and counter-mobilize, forcing the regime to
seek ever-greater gains to persuade (or silence) its critics.
Ironically, measures that regimes often rely upon to silence their critics –
including censorship, extensive surveillance, and coercion – actually increase the
pressures to maintain consistency with prior rhetorical claims. Such practices “spotlight” 38 For path dependent studies, see Mahoney 2001, 2000; Pierson 2003, 2000; Lieberson 1985:63-86.
31
the regime’s own rhetoric by silencing the voices of opponents, making it easier to
identify deviations and failures in the official line, thereby facilitating the further
mobilization of opposition.39
Second, the familiar dynamic of the security dilemma – where actions by one
state to raise its security come at the expense of another state – can also entrap regimes.
In particular, repeated interaction with a rival can lead to a hardening of the regime’s
rhetoric, raising the stakes for failure and thus generating a greater public commitment to
the maintenance of the present course. More than tipping the internal balance of power
between hardliners and moderates, as John Vasquez argues, the security dilemma acts to
shift the nature of the regime’s identity project in a more exclusive direction.40
Accordingly, the combination of a strengthening of exclusivist markers and the
very public nature of the debate often leads a regime to escalate, rather than retrench or
compromise, when enmeshed in a dispute or conflict. As identities harden, a regime’s
basic understanding of the “game” being played is also likely to slide in a more zero-sum
direction. One-time partners trying to coordinate their actions (a Stag Hunt) may now
redefine the game as one of competition (a Prisoners’ Dilemma) or of open hostility (a
Deadlock). In short, the social dynamics of the security dilemma can create a revisionist
state where none existed before by forcing a vulnerable regime to enter into a dispute or
conflict over a salient issue even if it preferred to defend the status quo.41 The same
mechanism can drag a hesitant regime into revisionist gambles by increasing the salience
of exclusivist tropes in its identity hierarchy even if that was not the original intent of the
regime.
39 Regimes that base their rule solely on coercion – though rare – are outside the scope of this study. 40 Vasquez 1993: 198-224, especially 213-14. 41 Though working in different theoretical traditions, two China specialists, Thomas Christensen and Iain Johnston, have argued that this might be the case in China-Taiwan relations. See Christensen 2002: 7-21; Johnston 2004.
32
The type of identity project a regime relies on for legitimization purposes can
therefore have adverse and unanticipated consequences for the effectiveness of its grand
strategy. Reliance on scapegoating and exclusivist rhetoric may, for example, remove
options like “compromise” and “retreat” from a regime’s choice set when dealing with a
rival. Indeed, the fear of providing opponents with additional examples of rhetorical
contradictions and policy failures can force regimes to reject means that may promise
higher gains and lower risks than the current policy. Even worse, exclusive projects can
entrap regimes in an equilibrium where chronic disputes and conflicts are required just to
uphold a regime’s current domestic standing.
This state of affairs is compounded by the fact that the impact of these crises is
cumulative. A regime relying on victories accumulated through either diplomacy or on
the battlefield will find that popular expectations of the regime’s performance increase
after each crisis. To stay ahead of public perceptions, then, the regime must score equal
or greater gains in each new crisis, creating a “ratchet effect” of steadily increasing risk
for greater gain. Accordingly, high-risk, high-gain strategies – “gambling for
resurrection” – appear to promise an embattled regime the opportunity to score victories
that might help it turn the corner on its legitimacy problems.
Nothing, after all, succeeds like success. Even despotic regimes such as the Soviet
Union and Baathist Iraq can command popular allegiance through battlefield successes.
Indeed, military defeat can be spun into a political success. Throughout history, leaders
have attempted to clutch political victory from the jaws of military defeat by trumpeting
their (costly) defiance of a stronger Power. Again, Saddam Hussein’s efforts to sell his
regime after the 1991 Persian Gulf War stressed the fact that he had challenged the
United States and survived to tell the tale.42 Such polices do not, however, fit exactly
under the rubric of a diversionary war or conflict. A substantial literature has arisen
42 Saddam Hussein’s standing among his Sunni power base was in fact predicated on his claims to have made Iraq a regional power. See Pollack 2004: 85-86.
33
around the belief that leaders use conflicts to rally support for their regime by deflecting
the public’s attention away from pressing domestic problems.43 Instead, I argue here that
conflict has a social function, namely, the consolidation and reinforcement of an identity
project, that is an end to itself. Conflict is therefore not used, as commonly cited in
diversionary war studies, for the purpose of acquiring some goods to distribute to key
audiences. In this scenario, conflict is anticipatory and chronic rather than reactionary
and opportunistic, as expected by diversionary war theory.
Over time, then, grand strategy becomes distorted and inverted, driven less by
concerns over state security than by the demands of regime survival. These strategic
inefficiencies appear in several forms. The military may be used to shore up the regime,
for example, leading the armed forces to lag behind external foes, causing it to become
less effective in war-fighting. Offensive military doctrines promising lightening victories
may also be favored and left untouched in the face of shifting strategic realities.44
Recruitment may also be confined to “reliable” elements of a population, placing severe
domestic constraints on the size of the military. Germany’s Schlieffen Plan (1905), which
called for a rapid knockout of France, was undone in part because German leaders were
determined to draft recruits from a shrinking but reliable rural population. In fact, the
Wilhelmine regime clung so tightly to this outmoded plan, even in the face of an Anglo-
French-Russian entente, that it was still resisting changes to its recruitment policies as
late as 1916.45 The argument is summarized below.
43 The diversionary war literature is vast. See for example: Chiozza and Goemans 2003: 443-67; Davis 2002: 672-93; Smith 1998; Dassel 1998; Schultz 1998; Fearon 1994: 577-92. 44 A status quo state can also employ offensive strategies and doctrines, but is unlikely to privilege them consistently across different contexts and issues. 45 See for example Herwig 1994: 275-76 and Geyer 1986: 527-98
34
Figure 1.1. The Causal Logic of the Argument.
The rise and subsequent demise of revisionist states can therefore be traced to the
same source: the nature of the regime’s collective identity project. This argument
suggests that the seeds of disaster for a would-be revisionist are sown early in the
formative stage of a regime’s efforts to win citizen (subject) allegiance. Identity projects
marked by exclusivist content and a high degree of fragmentation are especially prone to
generating pressures for a regime to use external violence. Such regimes often become
entrapped in an ideational equilibrium that demands the chronic use of realpolitik as a
tool for bolstering a flagging identity project. In short, this argument orients our attention
to the question of need – that is, why regimes feel compelled to pursue risky strategies –
instead of opportunities and material capabilities. Though couched in probabilistic terms,
this argument raises the possibility that there are limited but robust and generalizable
paths that lead to the pursuit of revisionism. The next section details existing alternative
explanations.
Regime's Needfor Legitimacy
ExclusiveIdentityBundle
Degree of DomesticCounter-Mobilization
Possible SecurityDilemma
ReinforcedIdentityCommitment
GrandStrategy
Formative Period Reproduction ofIdentity
Mechanisms ofEntrapment
PositiveFeedback Outcome
35
DEFINITIONS Regime
The definition of a regime here differs from its usage in either comparative
politics or inter-national relations and so needs to be addressed briefly. A regime is
defined as the collection of political authorities charged with exercising and legitimating
power in and over a particular society. It consists of two components: (1) an executive
leadership and (2) its institutional mechanisms for reproducing its rule, including press
and surveillance ministries.46 This definition places much less emphasis on the formal
institutions of decision-making such as legislatures found in traditional accounts. I justify
this exclusion on the grounds that such bodies are often only window-dressing in non-
democratic settings, and so are malleable and easily discarded without challenging the
underlying premises of the regime’s legitimacy project. Here, a regime is more closely
identified with the nature of its collective identity project rather than formal institutions,
though these can of course be tied closely to identity-building. We can speak, therefore,
of a Soviet regime that extended from 1953 to 1987 despite several leadership changes;
Mikhail Gorbachev’s reforms, if fully implemented, would be considered a regime
change because they challenged the underlying conception of the Soviet state and people.
There continues to be difficulty in establishing what constitutes a regime change
or “death” in the study of democratization. On the one hand, the violent overturning of an
existing leadership (whether through internal or external means) appears to be a clear
case of a regime change. Yet, on closer inspection, new leaders may continue or even
intensify its commitment to the ideational framework of their predecessors. Pakistan
experienced 11 changes of leadership between 1947 and 1971, for example, and yet each
new leadership pledged its commitment to uphold the same vision of national identity.
Regime death, in other words, seems restricted to those cases where the former regime’s
46 On classifying political regimes, see Munck 2001; Goodwin 2001: 24-31; Hanson 1995.
36
identity project is either abandoned outright or reordered so radically that its hierarchy of
salient markers only partially resembles that of its predecessor. This measure provides
some nuance in uncovering modest within-regime change while still setting a threshold
for identifying how much change is occurring. Regime change is clearly not a one-time
event, and regimes can gradually hollow out their identity project by slowing reordering
their identity markers. Still, this definition of regime death allows us to identify a date
when the process of regime change starts, with the understanding that it is a political
struggle to consolidate the regime (a question of stability) and to establish its political
authority (a question of legitimacy).47
Entrapment
Entrapment is defined here as the sharp narrowing of a regime’s choice set over
time due to its past rhetorical claims. These sunk costs create a commitment to maintain a
course of action even as it excludes other choices as politically impossible. As
entrapment pressures intensify, a regime acts to reinforce and intensify its commitment to
the present (remaining) option, even if risky or failing, to “make good” on prior claims
and stem – and perhaps reverse - an erosion of legitimacy.48 Direct evidence that regime
elites are aware of, and responding to, such pressures is an complex but not unassailable
methodological challenge. It requires knowledge of prior rhetorical claims and the
relative salience of such markers and symbols in the regime’s identity project as well as
the length of time that they have been relied upon. Next, we need to use measures of
entrapment that are independent of the outcome itself. Private communications and
statements by regime officials noting that an alternative course is better (prior to that
action being taken) but infeasible because of the political costs are one possible source of
information.
47 See Przeworski 1986: 50-53 on the need to keep regime stability and legitimacy distinct. 48 Brockner and Rubin 1985: 3-4.
37
Note that this is not “blowback” in the sense that Jack Snyder largely uses it;
elites have not convinced themselves of the rightness of the course but instead are unable
to change tack because of the political costs. Similarly, private correspondence and
archival records may also reveal that the regime did not harbor revisionist preferences at
that time but was forced to adopt a belligerent strategy because of popular expectations
(“we had no choice”).49 It is possible, of course, that these statements are simply
justifications for adopting what hindsight reveals to be a poor strategy. As always, it is
better to use multiple types of evidence from key members of the regime to confirm the
presence of such pressures before action was taken.
We can also look for evidence that the regime’s leadership is sensitive to what
Russian elites now term “black PR” (chernyi piar). Indeed, overreactions to negative
press coverage or to small-scale demonstrations suggest that a regime is at least aware of,
and perhaps sensitive to, rhetorical challenges. A rising sense that public opinion “must”
be appeased can afflict even leaders of totalitarian states. In a 23 February 1987 Politburo
meeting on Afghanistan, Gorbachev expressed concern that failure abroad could lead to a
public backlash at home.
[T]he domestic aspect is important, too. A million of our soldiers have been to Afghanistan. And all in vain, it turns out. The matter has not been brought to an end. We’re not answering to our own people. They will say: they’ve forgotten about the sacrifices and the authority of the country. It provokes a bitter taste—for what did you lay down [the lives of] people?50
49 These types of material should not be automatically treated as evidence for psychological explanations. Not all “dissonance” is psychologically rooted. Costs and rewards can be cast in political terms and are socially constructed by the visible nature of the regime’s rhetoric and position in society. 50 Mikhail Gorbachev, Politburo Meeting, 23 February 1987. Document reproduced in Cold War International History Project Bulletin No.14/15, 146.
38
An indirect measure of entrapment pressures can be gathered from the regime’s
own reply to its critics. The use of targeted policies designed to reduce the ability of the
opposition to voice its claims offers one clue that a regime is particularly vulnerable to
counter-claims. Similarly, in each of the regimes studied in this dissertation devoted
substantial resources to monitoring public opinion. Often regime officials would conduct
surveys and, in some cases, content analysis of media at the prefect or village level in
order to gauge public opinion. Some of these reports contain handwritten notes in the
margins by regime leaders (including Napoleon III), suggesting that heavy emphasis was
placed on reducing the regime’s vulnerability to its charges of its critics.51
THE REVISIONIST STATE AS THEORETICAL PROBLEM
Revisionist states are central to realist and rationalist theories of state behavior for
three reasons. First, revisionist states act as change agents in systemic-level theories by
providing the “shock” that disrupts the international equilibrium, thus enabling systemic
transformation.52 Second, the existence of a revisionist actor, or even simply the
possibility that such actors might arise, is often cited as the primary source of fear of
predation that creates the security dilemma. Indeed, the zero-sum logic of anarchy is
driven by incomplete information about others’ intentions and, in essence, whether a
revisionist will arise with little or no warning to attack other states.53 Finally, revisionists
are the states that most closely conform to realist and rationalist predictions about state
behavior. In fact, these states provide the baseline for realpolitik behavior: they are
deemed rational, calculating, self-interested, and intent on expanding until costs outrun
51 Case 1955: 9. 52 See Waltz 1979: 199-209; Gilpin 1981: 44-49. The same is true of systemic constructivism. See Wendt 1992: 407-10; Wendt 1999: 268-70. 53 See Taliaferro 2000/01: 145-51; Copeland 2000: 200-04; Kydd 1997; Gartzke 1999: 567-87; Lake and Powell 1999: 80-86. On predation as alternative to balancing, see Hui 2004: 175-86; Haldi 2003: 7-27. Mearsheimer 2001; Schweller 1998.
39
benefits.54 Deviation from this baseline, as Kenneth Waltz noted, means running the risk
of being “selected out” of the international system.55
Accordingly, these theories should be well-placed to explain why revisionist
states arise in world politics. There certainly seems to be no surfeit of possible
explanations. Realist and rationalist scholars, despite different theoretical premises, have
nonetheless converged on a research agenda that seeks to identify the structural
constraints and opportunities that condition the scope and scale of a revisionist’s
ambition. Relative economic performance, for example, is often cited as a principal factor
that enables or limits a state’s ability to pursue revisionism. Scholars have also pointed to
a host of other structural variables, including the number of Great Powers in the system
(polarity), the balance between offensive and defensive technologies, and the closeness of
parity between status quo and revisionist states as determinants of revisionism.56 This
section briefly surveys existing neorealist and rationalist theories, as well as constructivist
propositions, about why these actors arise.
Neorealism
Despite internal differences, neorealists share a similar conception of world
politics. States must engage in a zero-sum competition for security because the
international system is anarchical; that is, no sovereign is present that can enforce order
over self-interested, maximizing actors. Some neorealists, particularly John Mearsheimer,
view this security competition as so intense that they deny the possibility that status quo
54 Indeed, at least one critic notes that neorealism has become merely “cost-benefit analysis.” Rosecrance 2001: 132-54. 55 Waltz 1979: 91-93. 56 For the central precepts of neorealism, see Schweller and Wohlforth 2000: 60-108; Frankel 1996: ix-xx; Elman 1996: 7-53. On polarity, see Mearsheimer 2001; Hopf 1991; Waltz 1979. On offense-defense balance, see Biddle 2004, 2001; Lieber 2000; Van Evera 1999. On power transition, see Lemke 2002; Lemke and Werner 1996; Lemke and Reed, 1998, 1996; Organski and Kugler 1980. See also Gilpin 1981 for a closely related approach.
40
states can actually exist. Since no state can ever have enough security, all states must be
dissatisfied and thus revisionist by definition.57
Most neorealists do, however, believe that variation among revisionist and status
quo actor type is a useful distinction. Frequent if scattered references are made, for
example, to these types of actors in neorealist studies of the offense-defense balance, war
initiation, and alliance behavior, among others. To date, Randall Schweller’s pleas to
“bring the revisionist state back” into theories of state behavior represent the most
ambitious effort to tackle the issue.58 Schweller makes two significant modifications to
standard neorealist theories. First, contending that neorealism suffers from a “status quo
bias,” Schweller argues that states can, in certain circumstances, be motivated by profit
rather than security concerns. Second, he suggests that the quality of interstate relations is
shaped, at least in part, by the types of actors that inhabit an international system. He also
provides a typology of state behavior that ranges from satiated status quo actors (“lions”)
to unlimited aims revisionists (“wolves”). States are situated in this typology according to
the costs they are willing to bear to defend their values versus the costs they are willing to
incur to revise the status quo.59
Why, then, do revisionist states emerge in world politics? Schweller argues that
revisionists emerge when the expected net gain of conquest exceeds anticipated costs and
when a state is dissatisfied with the status quo. Limited-aims revisionists (“jackals”) align
with rising revisionist “wolves” out of an expectation of material gain and, in some cases,
out of fear that they too may fall victim to this Power if they do not join its coalition.
Unlimited-aims revisionists, on the other hand, are driven by the desire to achieve
absolute security through the domination of all other states.60
57 Mearsheimer 2001: 2-3, 29, 35, 37, 343, 415fn14. See also Snyder 2002: 149-173. 58 Schweller 1998, 1996, 1994. 59 Schweller 1998: 83-91. This classification scheme of risk propensity draws on Jervis 1976: 50-51. 60 Schweller 1998: 75-89; 1996: 106-07; 1994: 93-95
41
Schweller’s emphasis on the profit motive as the taproot of such ambitions moves
us part way toward an explanation, but the question of why some states are in the “profit-
seeking” column while others remain “satiated” is left unanswered. Perhaps most
curiously, Schweller restricts his argument to the limited-aims revisionists in the system
and thus provides no explanation or empirical measures for the “wolf,” the principal
revisionist. Moreover, we are left without an explanation for why these regimes are
willing to risk war and its consequences to overturn the status quo, especially if, as
Schweller concedes, limited-aims revisionists are “not entirely dissatisfied with their
place.”61
Focusing on the structural distribution of interests, Schweller is uninterested in
actor motives, being content to note that what all revisionist share is a belief that the
system is illegitimate. By dismissing such factors as ideology, however, Schweller misses
an opportunity to investigate whether there are similarities at the unit level that shape the
probability of revisionism.62 Such an approach might shed light on why some states
persist in pursuing revisionism despite mounting costs and unfavorable historical success
rates. A move away from an exclusive focus on military capabilities and onto actor
motivations might also offer insights into why weak states such as Serbia or Eritrea as
well as Great Powers pursue revisionism, and whether a common process is at work in
these cases.
Robert Gilpin has also advanced an influential account of why states challenge the
existing status quo. Gilpin argues that a revisionist state is an actor for whom the benefits
of expanding outweigh its probable costs, due in large measure to a relative increase in
power that lowers the costs of seeking revisionism.63 “A state will attempt to change the
61 Schweller 1998: 88. 62 Aside from scattered references to leaders’ statements, Schweller appears to use behavioral indicators as the measure of intentions. See for example: Schweller 1998: 31-38. 63 This view of revisionism is found across a number of different literatures. See for example: North 1981: 27-30; Skocpol 1979: 47-50, 285-87; Tilly 1992: 67-95; Motyl 1999: 127-45.
42
international system,” Gilpin writes, “only if it has some relative advantage over others,
that is, if the balance of power is to its advantage.”64 All states can therefore become
revisionist if they possess the requisite relative material capacity and, as such,
revisionism is a “normal,” even automatic, element of world politics. The scale of
revisionist ambition is also a function of the international system: a state will seek to
maximize its power until the costs outweigh the benefits, usually when a counter-
balancing alliance is formed or state finances collapse under the weight of imperial over-
extension.
Gilpin’s elegant theorizing comes at the cost, however, of restricting our focus to
a very narrow set of behavior; anything less than the initiation of hegemonic war for a
change of system is ruled out of his account. Similarly, this theoretical lens privileges a
small subset of actors, primarily those capable of challenging the system or its leader. As
a consequence, we omit from our analysis weaker states that nonetheless opt to challenge
the system even in the face of unfavorable odds and, perhaps, declining fortunes as
well.65 By focusing narrowly on capacity for revision rather than motive, Gilpin restricts
his theoretical focus by excluding other reasons that lead to revisionism. Gilpin himself
seems to recognize this fact, since he also makes passing mention to the crucial role that
prestige plays in world politics.66 Unfortunately, this second type of revisionism (i.e. a
prestige-deficit path) is excluded from his definition.67
Another possible explanation for a state’s proclivity to over-expand is offered by
Jack Snyder’s domestic coalition model.68 Though not specifically aimed at explaining
64 Gilpin 1981: xx. 65 Strategies of asymmetry are in general understudied. See Arreguín-Toft 2001: 93-128 and Paul 1994. 66 Gilpin 1981: 31. 67 Key examples of this status-inconsistency approach are: Galtung 1964, 1968; Wallace 1973; Gochman 1980. 68 Snyder 1991: 21-65. By selecting only Great Powers for inclusion, Snyder controls for capabilities and therefore does not explore whether weaker states are subject to the same pressures to over-expand.
43
revisionist states, the argument’s emphasis on how coalitions construct, and often fall
victim to, imperial ideologies and myths could explain why revisionists pursue
suboptimal overexpansion. Susceptibility to “blowback” is determined by domestic
political structure, itself consisting of coalition types and the state’s developmental stage.
While the argument is suggestive, however, problems remain. The mechanisms of
“blowback” are never clearly outlined, for example, and so it is unclear why the same
elites who create these myths somehow come to delude themselves into believing them.
There are at least two plausible paths to this situation: through cognitive heuristics or
through the public cost of shifting these myths, but Snyder never disentangles the two
approaches. Moreover, why the public cannot be sold a new set of myths – and, indeed,
why they matter at all in the totalitarian states he studies – is left unexplored. Finally, it is
not clear when myths trump systemic imperatives (and vice versa). In some cases,
notably Wilhelmine Germany, elites are responding accurately to security pressures; in
other cases, particularly Nazi Germany, elites are suffering from self-delusion.69
Rationalist Explanations
The origins, strategy, and war-making decisions of revisionist states also appear
to be ideal test cases for rationalist explanations. All of the scope conditions cited as
necessary for rationalist explanations to have purchase on state behavior are present in
spades with potential revisionists. For example, decisions are thought to conform to the
strict dictates of cost-benefit calculations when the stakes of an issue are high and when
the “good” being contested is scarce.70 In such situations, any type of irrationality is
squeezed out from decision-making under the pressure of high stakes, risks, and costs
69 Snyder 1991: 99-111. 70 Reiter 2003: 28; MacDonald 2003: 556-59. Lake and Powell 1999: 6-13.
44
associated with failure. These conditions are clearly relevant to decisions about revising
an international order through violence.
Moreover, rationalist explanations are thought to apply best to situations where
decision-making is concentrated in the hands of a single leader or small group of
individuals.71 And, because there are assumed to be few enforceable rules in the
international system that might limit choices, actors have a broad choice set that they
utilize under anarchical conditions. Finally, large and rapid shifts in an actor’s relative
power may cause inefficiency in outcomes even under conditions of complete
information.72 This may explain why revisionist strategies are plagued by pathologies
that undermine military effectiveness and contribute to a dismal success rate.
Rationalists offer two different explanations for revisionist states. Power
transition theorists hold that war is probable when a dissatisfied challenger, propelled by
a higher rate of relative growth, reaches parity (or near it) with a hegemon. Power
transitions are therefore dangerous moments in world politics, with a high probability of
war being attached to them: one-third of all such transitions have resulted in war. 73 A
“challenger” is said to have three attributes. First, the revisionist is usually, if not always,
a late-comer to the system, arriving after its framework has already been established and
its benefits distributed.74 Second, the revisionist is thought to differ widely from the
dominant power in terms of its internal organization (usually its economy and/or its mode
of governance).75
Third, revisionists are unwilling to accept a subordinate position because
hegemony would yield much greater rewards and benefits than would continued “second-
71 Reiter 2003; Bennett and Stam 2004: 170-72; Fiorina 1990. 72 Powell 2004: 231-41. 73 See de Soysa et al., 1997: 509-28; Lemke and Werner 1996: 251-56; Vasquez 1993; Kim and Morrow 1992: 896-922; Gochman 1980: 107-15. 74 Organski 1958: 325; Organski and Kugler 1980: 19-22; Lemke and Werner 1996; Kugler and Lemke 2000. 75 On late-comer status, see especially Maoz 1989; for domestic similarity, see Werner and Lemke 1997, 1998.
45
tier” status. Revisionists are thus motivated by a desire for relative gain combined with
anger at lost opportunities (a result of systemic constraints) for further growth.76 It is
important to note, however, that power transition theorists also view the revisionist as a
“normal” state in the sense that it operates according to the same cost-benefit calculus
that propels all state behavior. What makes the revisionist unique, then, is the structural
position it occupies as a late-developer, and not some innate urge to expand.
Though the power transition approach has generated a wealth of empirical studies,
there has been little study of why a revisionist would be dissatisfied, especially since it is
rising at a faster rate than the hegemon in an order ostensibly skewed against the
newcomer. Moreover, there has been little work to date on empirically measuring such
perceptions directly. Though most of the statistical analyses do report that perceptions of
satisfaction are more significant than rising capabilities, the proxy measure of
dissatisfaction – rapid arms buildup – is often quite close to the behavior that we are
trying to explain.77 Curiously, power transition theory leads us to over-predict and under-
predict revisionism since it implies that all states short of the hegemon should be
dissatisfied (and thus potential revisionists), while only a very few states actually become
revisionist.78 This approach also confines us to a restrictive measure of revisionism – the
initiation of Great Power war – as well as a small population of “contenders.” Finally,
this view of the revisionist-as-initiator provides a skewed account of status quo powers,
who are curiously defined as being satiated and thus unwilling to use force, even to check
76 See especially Organski and Kugler 1980: 19-20 and Lemke and Reed 1998: 511-16. 77 Lemke 2002: 100-09 on this point. See also Lemke 2002: 125, 134, 155, 181, 183, 209-10, 212, 214 for evidence of the relative weight of satisfaction measures. Glaser 2004: 46-50 for debates about the linkage between arms racing and war. 78 Depending on the type of data employed, between 33 per cent and 49 per cent of transitions since 1816 have led to war. See de Soysa, Oneal, and Park 1997: 521-24; Lemke and Werner 1996: 251-56;
46
the rise of a challenger. As such, this account works to exclude the possibility that status
quo powers compete, let alone fight, with one another.79
A second rationalist perspective, the bargaining model of war, also appears at first
glance to be well-suited to explaining revisionism. In this formulation, the causes,
prosecution, and termination of a war are all considered to be parts of the same
bargaining process between two states. Fighting is assumed to be costly regardless of
outcomes, and is sparked by disagreement among the parties over their respective
capabilities and level of resolve. Unable to reach a bargain that they both prefer to war,
and unable to commit credibly not to fight in the future, these states will engage in war as
a way of providing information about their capabilities and resolve.80 War, in other
words, is instrumental.
Acting to reduce uncertainty around resolve and capabilities, fighting makes the
once-impossible settlement now reachable. Indeed, the principle of wartime convergence
suggests that warring states will come to agree on the relative likelihood of different
outcomes, making an agreement possible once warfare loses its information-providing
function. States scale their demands back in response to this information; in some
models, the more convergent these expectations about outcomes, the more durable the
postwar settlement.81
Yet the bargaining model of war has several shortcomings. Some regimes, for
example, may not be selecting from a full choice set; in fact, their collective identities or
“prior beliefs” can restrict the options available to a leadership so severely that
revisionism, despite its risk, is attractive. War and conflict may not be as costly as
suggested; in fact, they may yield substantial benefits, even in the face of military defeat,
79 The question of why status quo powers do not preemptively attack rising challengers has not yet been addressed in power transition theory. 80 Slantchev 2003: 626-29 argues that war initiation does not represent a bargaining failure but an attempt to gauge an opponent’s resolve, thereby obtaining a more favorable settlement. 81 Gartzke 1999, Reed 2003, Slantchev 2003, Reiter 2003, Filson and Werner 2002: 819-37; Fearon 1995; Powell 1999; cf. Blainey 1973.
47
in the form of consolidating a collective identity and ultimately cementing a regime’s
standing. Furthermore, the provision of information during war may not lead to updating
of beliefs. In fact, this information is just as likely to force revisionists to escalate their
demands because the issue at stake is often tied to its legitimacy. Indeed, a public failure
may be enough to cripple a regime if its legitimacy is heavily invested in the issue at
stake. Similarly, if rhetoric and identities can harden through interaction, the ability and
the desire to make concessions or enter negotiations will be removed.
Regimes may therefore fully understand the risks involved as well as the
imbalance of military capabilities (and perhaps even resolve) and yet still opt for war.
This is a commitment problem, but not of the sort that rationalists describe when they
note that such actors cannot reach an agreement for fear of future reneging.82 Instead, a
regime has a highly public commitment to the maintenance of its project that may force it
to initiate war and to keep it trapped there well past the point where all information about
costs and resolve has been provided. Though empirical applications of such models
remain rare, the decision to begin the analysis at the period just prior to war will
inevitably privilege proximate factors, to the exclusion of long-term processes that can
explain how it is that a regime found itself entrapped into declaring and prosecuting a
risky war. The fact that unanticipated consequences can arise from the demands of
identity maintenance also seems to contradict the heavy emphasis on rational learning
implicit in this model. Constructivism
Constructivist research seeks to demonstrate the impact that norms and identities
have on the conduct of foreign policy, a goal shared by this dissertation.83 Though
82 On commitment problems, see especially Fearon 1995: 379-414. 83 Key constructivist works include: Tannenwald 2003; Finnemore 2003; Crawford 2003; Hopf 2002; Bukovansky 2002; Checkel 2001; Johnston 2001; Wendt 1999, 1992; Hurd 1999;
48
constructivists have yet to advance and test propositions specifically about revisionist
states, suggestive ideas abound. Mlada Bukovansky, for example, argues that would-be
challengers can engage in “legitimacy contests” by strategically using the cultural
contradictions in international political culture to facilitate a challenge to the existing
status quo.84 Alexander Wendt, too, notes that the emergence of a “predator” in the
system is sufficient to cause temporary regressions back to a Hobbesian state of nature.
Moreover, the timing of a predator’s appearance impacts the very culture of a system;
early predation will generate a world of anarchy, while a challenge to a mature anarchy
may be met collectively.85 And, following Durkheim, we might note that revisionists are
useful because they define the boundaries of acceptable conduct while serving as
warnings of the penalties of transgression, much the same as criminals do in society.86
While these propositions are suggestive, Wendt is mostly silent on the question of
why these states arise, preferring to ascribe predatory motives to either unit-level “private
beliefs” or to a state’s rejection of its place in the reigning role structure.87 More
generally, the apparently durable nature of these private beliefs remains a puzzle for
constructivists: why are revisionist identities resistant to the pressures of socialization?
These pressures are thought to enforce conformity through internalization of shared
beliefs, and yet predator states appear to be able to resist nearly all such efforts even if
they have been members of the system for a lengthy period.88 The role played by society
and, more generally, domestic politics, still remains relatively unexplored.89 How newly
socialized elites in heavily institutionalized settings such as the European Union return Finnemore 1996; Katzenstein 1996. See also Hurd 1999: 385, 388, 398 and Armstrong 1993: 1-12 for propositions about revisionist states. 84 Bukovansky 2002: 38-45. 85 Wendt 1999: 188, 264, 269, 289, 325-31; Wendt 1992: 407-10. 86 Durkheim 1938: 65-73. 87 Wendt 1999: 124 (private beliefs) and 282 (role structure) and 262-64 for blurring of the two. 88 On socialization in IR, see especially Checkel 2003: 211-14, 2001; Johnston 2001; Hurd 1999; Wendt 1999: 132, 324-26; Finnemore 1996. But see Armstrong 1993 for the argument that revolutionary states end up being socialized into the system. 89 See Checkel 2003, 1998 on the first point and Hopf 2002: 288-295 on the second.
49
home to “sell” their new message is, for example, still broadly neglected. Perhaps most
importantly, constructivists have yet to tackle the theoretical and methodological
challenges posed by the fact that actors have multiple identities. In particular, the
possibility that these identities may compete with each other, or with the prevailing
norms of the system, remains undertheorized.
The same is true of efforts to measure these identities, their relative salience, and
changes over time in the content and contradictions present. Further progress in identity-
related research will hinge on whether empirical measures can be devised to facilitate
hypothesis testing and the creation of a store of propositions about how identity variation
shapes actor behavior.90 Arguably, a fully realized identity argument will be marked by
three traits: (1) identity will be operationalized in a replicable and falsifiable manner to
facilitate the measuring of variation; (2) the mechanism(s) by which identity is said to
influence behavior will be identified; and (3) the nature of the relationship between
multiple identities – including the selection mechanism among them – will be specified.
This dissertation represents one such effort.
RESEARCH DESIGN
I use multiple methodologies to test the proposed relationship between the
independent variable, collective identity, and the dependent variable of grand strategy.
The dissertation’s first half is devoted to two paired historical comparisons that assess the
ability of the argument to explain state behavior across different contexts. The first of
these comparisons examines how two vastly dissimilar states – France (1848-71) and
Pakistan (1947-71) – nonetheless pursued similar revisionist “gambles” that in each case
led to regime death and partial state dismemberment. Reversing this comparative logic,
90 Abdelal, Herrera, Johnston, and McDermott 2003.
50
the next comparison details how two states, France (1815-48) and the Soviet Union
(1917-45), shared similar traits but ultimately pursued radically divergent strategies. In a
bid to further detail the causal mechanisms linking collective identity to foreign policy
behavior, the dissertation’s second half consists of a longitudinal study of a potential
revisionist state: postcommunist Russia, 1993-2004. This case utilizes a blend of
computer-assisted content analysis (CATA) to measure collective identity; event data,
participant observation, and interviews with activists challenging the regime’s project;
and event data analysis and case studies of Russian strategy.
To ensure unbiased results, however, it was first necessary to draw an appropriate
sample of revisionist and status quo actors across time. Following Gary King and
Langche Zeng, I adopted a rare event research design that consisted of two steps.91 First,
relevant cases of a revisionist state were collected for the period between 1792 and 2000.
Because revisionist states are assumed to be rare actors in the international system, I
sampled on the dependent variable to maximize the probability of collecting all relevant
cases. Sifting through historical accounts of warfare in various eras, as well as
quantitative studies of war initiation patterns, I identified 30 states that had engaged in
sustained campaigns of revisionist behavior.
More specifically, a state was classified as a revisionist if three indicators were
present: (1) a declared intent to revise the existing international or regional order and
replace it with an alternative vision; (2) participation in a high level of militarized
disputes and/or the initiation of two wars in 10 years; and (3) its use of force broke shared
rules governing either the legitimate purposes of war or the way it should be conducted in
a given era.92 I then used Correlates of War data and the software package Eugene to
91 King and Zeng 2001: 693-715. 92 The case of postwar Germany (1919-33) does not fit this criterion neatly but owing to its historical importance I opted to include it. Its leading statesmen, including Gustav Stresemann, expressed clear preferences for over-turning the Treaty of Versailles’ in Eastern Europe. Moreover, Interwar Germany did pursue clandestine re-armament in the Soviet Union. I use these measures as proxies for revisionism in this instance.
51
select 30 status quo states randomly.93 This design ensures that the full “contrast space”94
across revisionist and status quo actors is present.
The descriptive statistics of Table 1.1 confirm simply but powerfully that
revisionism indeed has a high hazard rate. A full 60 percent (18 of 30) regimes that
pursued revisionism suffered “death” through either military defeat at the hands of
external foe or internal upheaval. The hazard rate for status quo regimes, as one might
expect, is substantially lower: only 17 percent (5 of 30) met a similar fate. Moreover,
revisionists not only have a higher hazard rate than comparable status quo states but also
appear to fail at a higher rate than the baseline average of wartime success. Indeed, one
survey of the fate of 72 “predators” between 1816 and 1992 recorded a 46 percent failure
rate when such states initiated a war.95 A second quantitative analysis finds a 40 percent
failure rate for war initiators (1495-1991), a figure that drops to a remarkable 28 percent
failure rate between 1800-1991.96 The fact that 60 percent of revisionists not only fail in
warfare but also experience regime death is therefore clear evidence of the risky,
suboptimal nature of revisionist policies.97
93 Status quo states may have used violence in this era, but when they did so, they usually elected to abide by prevailing norms governing the use of force. Moreover, military force was used to preserve, rather than challenge, the existing status quo. 94 Collier and Mahoney 1996: 56-91. 95 Rasler and Thompson 1999: 427. Their definition of a “predator” differs from that of a “revisionist” used here since they do not consider whether war was part of a broader campaign or if the use of military force was in line with shared rules and limits. 96 Wang and Ray 1994: 150. 97 “Regime” death should not be confused with “state death,” which is now receiving some attention from scholars. See Fazal 2004: 311-44 and Adams 2003/04: 45-83 Revisionist regimes are therefore not comforted by the possibility that the sovereignty norm will prevent the destruction of the state because the regime will die, even if sovereignty norm is present. On this norm, see Zacher 2001: 215-50.
52
Table 1.1. A Comparison of Death Rates Between Revisionist and Status Quo States, 1793-2000.
Revisionist Status Quo
State Years Regime
Collapse? State Years Regime
Collapse? China 1949-1979 No Austria 1815-1854 No
Croatia 1991-1995 No Austria 1854-1914 Yes Egypt 1948-1979 Yes Brazil 1964-2000 No Eritrea 1993-2000 No China 1976-2000 No France 1848-1871 Yes Egypt 1980-2000 No France 1792-1815 Yes France 1818-1848 Yes
Germany 1890-1918 Yes France 1919-1939 Yes Germany 1919-1933 Yes Germany 1871-1990 No Germany 1933-1945 Yes Germany 1945-2000 No
India 1948-2000 No Hungary 1991-2000 No Iran 1979-2000 No Italy 1945-2000 No Iraq 1968-2000 Yes Japan 1945-2000 No Italy 1921-1943 Yes Nigeria 1945-2000 No Japan 1894-1931 Yes Ottoman
Empire 1815-1854 No
Japan 1932-1945 Yes Ottoman Empire
1856-1914 Yes
Libya 1973-2000 No Piedmont 1815-1848 No North Korea 1950-2000 No Poland 1991-2000 No
Pakistan 1947-1971 Yes Prussia 1815-1853 No Pakistan 1971-1999 Yes Russia 1815-1854 No
Piedmont 1848-1870 No Russia 1905-1917 Yes Prussia 1848-1871 No Sardinia 1815-1848 No Russia 1856-1905 No South Korea 1953-2000 No
Sardinia 1848-1870 Yes Spain 1815-1853 No Serbia 1876-1915 Yes United
Kingdom 1815-1854 No
Serbia 1991-2000 Yes United Kingdom
1919-1945 No
Somalia 1963-1991 Yes United Kingdom
1856-1914 No
South Africa 1949-1990 Yes United States 1945-1991 No Soviet Union 1917-1953 No United States 1919-1941 No Soviet Union 1954-1991 Yes Uzbekistan 1991-2000 No
Syria 1948-2000 No South Africa 1991-2000 No
N=30
N=18
N=30
N=5
53
There also appears to be little connection between a state’s capabilities and the
proclivity of its regime to pursue revisionism. Using the Correlates of War composite
national capabilities index, Table 1.2 lists each revisionist’s share of total systems
capabilities.98 To be sure, such measures miss important aspects of a state’s power,
including the quality of its military and alliance partners.99 Yet a glance at the table
reveals that there is substantial variation in the degree of strength among would-be
revisionists. Some revisionists, notably the Soviet Union, Nazi Germany, and Wilhelmine
Germany, possessed a substantial share of systemic capabilities.
98 The COW Combined Capabilities Index (CCI) measures along six dimensions: the country’s iron/steel production, urban population, total population, total military expenditures, total military personnel and the total amount of energy production. 99 Biddle 2004, Chap 2. Note that by omitting the resources of alliance partners I underestimate the strength of leading revisionists such as the Soviet Union and therefore underrepresent the variance in capabilities among revisionist states.
54
Table 1.2. Revisionist States and Their Relative Share of System Capabilities,
1815-1993.*
State
Years
Relative Share of System Capabilities (%)
(Average)
Regime Death?
Soviet Union 1954-91 16.9 Yes
Germany 1933-45 13.7 Yes
Germany 1890-1918 13.6 Yes
Soviet Union 1917-1953 13.5 No
France 1848-1871 12.7 Yes China 1949-1979 11.6 No Russia 1856-1905 10.3 No
Germany 1919-1933 7.7 Yes Japan 1932-1945 5.8 Yes
Prussia 1848-1971 5.7 No India 1948-1993 5.1 No Japan 1894-1931 3.6 Yes Italy 1921-1943 3.4 Yes
Serbia 1876-1915 1.4 Yes Egypt 1948-1979 1.0 Yes
Pakistan 1947-1971 1.0 Yes Iraq 1968-1993 1.0 Yes
Pakistan 1971-1993 .9 Yes Iran 1979-1993 .8 No
North Korea 1950-1993 .7 No South Africa 1949-1993 .6 Yes
Croatia 1991-1993 .51 No Serbia 1991-1993 .4 Yes Eritrea 1993 .34 No Syria 1948-1993 .3 No Libya 1973-1993 .1 No
Somalia 1963-1991 .05 Yes Data is from Correlates of War (COW) Ver. 3.01
* Three states from Table 1.1. are missing due to data limitations: France (1793-1815); Piedmont; and Sardinia
55
Others, however, possessed less than a single percentage of systemic capabilities
yet were capable of wreaking tremendous havoc: Pakistan, Iraq, and even destitute
Eritrea all fit this mold. In fact, less than half (12 of 30) of these states are even
considered “Great Powers,” a fact that should raise questions about why we restrict our
analyses to Great Powers alone. And, crucially, weaker revisionists do not “die” at a
higher rate than stronger ones. Drawing an arbitrary cutoff point at 3 percent of system
capabilities, for examples, reveals that 64 percent of those above this threshold and 53
percent below experienced regime death.100
An important limitation of such data, however, is that they only capture those
regimes that actively conducted revisionist campaigns. Accordingly, there is an unknown
selection effect at work since some regimes may have been deterred from undertaking
such ventures for a variety of reasons. The danger, then, is that this dataset will over-
represent the most desperate revisionist and will miss those that perhaps flirted with the
notion but then abandoned it. However, it is unlikely that regimes were deterred by
material insufficiency given the range of national power that exists between the Soviet
Union (and its allies) and Somalia. If regimes were deterred, it was not for a perceived
lack of capabilities.101
The Historical Cases
The use of paired historical cases allows us to test the argument while controlling
for the variables commonly utilized in neorealist and rationalist explanations of state
behavior. These four cases are all drawn from the above sample frame and represent the
100 This relationship holds even if we move the threshold. Above a threshold of one percent, 64 percent of regimes died; at five percent and above, 55 percent died; and at above 10 percent, 57 percent of regimes died. 101 Smith 1996: 698-701.
56
full range of behavior, ranging from a committed status quo actor (France, 1816-48) to a
cautious yet increasing entrapped regime (Soviet Union, 1917-53) to two vivid examples
of “gambling” revisionists (France, 1848-71 and Pakistan, 1947-71). Because these cases
span diverse contexts and historical eras, they help establish confidence that there are
robust and generalizable paths to revisionism. Both primary and secondary sources are
used to assess the nature of the regime’s identity project, the degree of resistance it
sparked, and the nature of the grand strategies adopted. Each chapter follows the “arc” of
a regime’s attempts to consolidate its project, providing us with multiple observations of
revisionist behavior over time.102
Chapter 3 adopts a method of agreement research design to compare how France
(1848-71) and Pakistan (1947-71) converged on the same pattern of revisionism. These
states vary across nearly every variable neorealist and rationalist theories rely on to
explain state behavior, including polarity, relative strength, regime type, offense-defense
balance, opportunities for expansion, and the extent of democratization. This
heterogeneity enables the researcher to eliminate causes that are not common to both
cases or, alternatively, that predict opposing outcomes that are contradicted by the
observed similarities in behavior. Despite these differences, each regime pursued
remarkably similar campaigns of revisionism that led to regime collapse and partial state
dismemberment. Moreover, in each case regime collapse came as the result of a long
series of crises that culminated in an ill-advised declaration of war against neighboring
rivals to “gamble for resurrection.” This outcome stems from the nature of the highly
exclusionary, highly fragmented collective identities that each regime relied on to
legitimate its rule. Cross-cutting pressures arising from contradictory identity strands
102 The “unit” of each chapter is therefore understood as the unfolding process of a regime’s identity consolidation and maintenance efforts over time. This allows multiple observations of a unit within one case. On this point, see Gerring 2004.
57
would force the regimes to adopt increasingly risky policies to score gains to silence
domestic critics.
Chapter 4 reverses this comparative logic and employs a method of difference
case design to examine the divergence in French (1816-48) and Soviet (1917-53)
strategies. Though the similarities may not be readily apparent, they nonetheless share a
common starting point and structural variables. In each case, we observe a new regime
faced with the task of constructing a new collective identity in the aftermath of a military
defeat, foreign occupation, and the imposition of a new international order built in part to
contain each Power. Each state was positioned in a multi-polar system, held significant
(in fact, nearly identical) share of systemic material capabilities, and were surrounded by
weak neighbors. Yet each regime elected to pursue a different set of strategies, a
divergence that stems from the sharp differences in each regime’s legitimating project.
Indeed, Soviet regime’s slow but steady adoption of increasingly revisionist (and risky)
strategies tracks closely with the regime’s growing reliance on exclusivist rhetoric and
ethnic-scapegoating (and, later, ethnic cleansing) as instruments of rule. By contrast, the
new French regime largely resisted the temptation to establish its rule on opposition to
the status quo and instead elected to anchor itself with a broadly inclusive, though not
democratic, collective identity project.
This French case is especially important because it provides a window into the
process by which a former (and perhaps future) revisionist was peacefully reintegrated
into the status quo. A scant eight years after its defeat in the Napoleonic Wars, France
deployed a 100,000-strong army to quell dissent in Spain in the name of the same
Concert that had defeated it. The Soviet case, too, is important because it has been
consistently cited as a “poster boy” for neorealist theories of state behavior.103 New
103 The Soviet case is also interesting because it provides an example of a regime that, despite the pathologies it introduced into its grand strategy, survived its ambitions (at least temporarily), though at tremendous cost. See “Neizvestnaya tsena pobedy [The Unknown Price of Victory],” Nezavisimoe Voennoe Obozrenie 18 June 2004 for a recent assessment of those costs.
58
archival research and documents paint a different picture, however. I argue here that
Soviet leadership, increasingly faced with latent discontent throughout the 1930s, was
seeking to persuade its critics of the correctness of the Soviet path through foreign
victories. This desire to consolidate the Soviet project around ethno-Russian nationalism
bred a reliance on offensive military doctrines that would lead Stalin to pursue foreign
conquests (1939-40) and even to mass his forces for a preventative strike against Nazi
Germany in May 1941.
Postcommunist Russia
The dissertation’s second half examines the process of identity formation and
foreign policy in postcommunist Russia (1993-2004). Postcommunist Russia was
selected because it possesses many of the preconditions that existing neorealist and
rationalists theories argue raise the probability that a state will turn revisionist. Despite
our current focus on the threat of international terrorism, it needs to be recalled that
Russia’s future orientation remained a pressing security concern for American policy-
makers throughout the 1990s and into the new Bush administration.104 And with good
reason, for the combination of partial democratization, the onset of nationalism, the
presence of a large co-ethnic diaspora in weak neighbors, and the sudden loss of Great
Power status has been cited as fertile soil for the rise of revanchist policies.
Even though such policies have not yet been adopted, Russia’s integration into
international organizations still remains partial and halting. The case also poses a key
challenge for an identity-based argument because a near consensus exists among Russia
scholars that Russian identity remains enmeshed in crisis and too unstable to drive policy
consistently.105 At the same time, neorealists have argued that ideational factors can have
104 For an excellent overview, see Goldgeier and McFaul 2003. 105 For a prominent recent example, see Billington 2004. See also Chapter 5.
59
little influence on policy in conditions of material weakness.106 Finally, the eventual
direction of Russia’s strategy remains unknown to the observer, and so we are forced to
rely on multiple methods to test the argument without tracing backwards from an
outcome and thus finding the “correct” identity.
The case study is divided into a comparison of identity-building and foreign
policy under first Boris Yeltsin (January 1993-December 1999) and then Vladimir Putin
(January 2000-May 2004). I employ computer-assisted content analysis to measure the
content and consistency of the regime’s efforts to entrench its vision of Russian national
identity. To track these changes, a random sample of regime rhetoric for the entire period
was created. I relied on public speeches, interviews, and press briefings by members of
the Presidential Administration, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and various power
ministries for evidence of the regime’s efforts.
The total number of documents analyzed is 1096, with eight documents – two per
week – being selected per month per year. This collection of official rhetoric is the most
comprehensive to date and allows us to measure changes in identity with a degree of
precision that has so far been absent from the study of Russian identity. In particular, this
content analysis enables the measurement of changes in the salience of identity markers
over time, the presence of scapegoating rhetoric against either internal or external foes,
and the prevailing conception of the “game” that characterizes Russia’s relations with the
outside world.
Though the content analysis records top-down efforts to institutionalize an
identity, we also need to be able to assess the public’s reaction to this identity project;
that is, the “bottom-up” response. In particular, this view from society allows us to
examine the microfoundations of the entrapment process. On the side of the regime, we
106 Brooks and Wohlforth 2002, 2001; English 2002; Evangelista 1999.
60
focus on the various methods and tactics that regimes can use to persuade, monitor, and
in some cases, silence, societal opposition.
We then examine how activists have mobilized to challenge a central plank in
each regime’s identity project, the war in Chechnya. Since each regime has prosecuted a
war in Chechnya, it is an ideal standard for comparing the ability of groups to organize
and mobilize using the regime’s own rhetoric as a weapon to force a change (or not) in its
policies. Event analysis and internal documents from these movements are used to track
the size and frequency of protests across time. Newspaper accounts are also drawn upon
to verify size and frequency of protests, as well as their effectiveness in generating
opposition. For the Putin era, I supplement these data with participant observations of
protests (September-December 2001, September 2002-February 2003) along with
interviews of activists, journalists, and state officials.
Finally, each chapter analyzes the evolution of Russian strategy by using a dataset
of daily foreign policy actions (January 1992 to May 2004). Consisting of thousands of
observations, these data enable us to paint a more accurate picture of Russia’s orientation
toward the present status quo. Indeed, these observations are coded along a 24-point scale
of actions that range from highly pro-status quo – seeking deeper integration in
international organizations, for example – to the highly revisionist, including the use of
military force. This scale also helps address the question of mixed strategies in two ways:
(1) it permits a calculation of the overall orientation of the strategy and the intensity of its
pro- or anti-status quo acts and (2) we can isolate the number and type of revisionist acts
to determine in which areas Russian policy is revisionist. To complete the analysis, each
chapter examines a major crisis – NATO’s intervention in Kosovo (1999) and the
stationing of American forces in Central Asia after 11 September 2001 – to examine how
external events have impacted Russian identity. These cases close the circle by
demonstrating how “shocks” from abroad can have an equally profound impact on a
regime’s identity project as internal dissent.
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PLAN OF THE DISSERTATION
This opening chapter argues that the origins of revisionism are found in the nature
of the collective identity that a regime uses to legitimate its rule. Instead of focusing on
material capabilities or systemic opportunities for expansion, as existing approaches
largely do, I argue that we need to examine why regimes feel compelled to adopt such
risky strategies. I contend that certain types of identities – namely, those marked by
exclusivist and fragmentary content – are most likely to force a regime to consolidate its
identity project through interstate violence. Such identities also introduce pathologies into
a regime’s grand strategy that ultimately undermine its strategic and military
effectiveness. As a result, revisionists possess a “regime death” rate three times higher
than that of comparable status quo actors regardless of the material capabilities of the
would-be revisionist.
The next chapter outlines the theoretical argument in greater detail and derives a
set of hypotheses about the relationship between collective identity and proclivity toward
revisionism.
Chapter 3 engages in a most-different historical comparison that tracks the
convergence on revisionist strategies by two dissimilar states, that of Napoleon III’s
France (1848-71) and post-independence Pakistan, 1947-71. Chapter 4 reverses the
comparative logic by examining how the strategies of two similar states – the Soviet
Union (1917-53) and France (1816-48) – nonetheless radically diverged. Chapter 5
introduces postcommunist Russia as a potential revisionist state. Chapters 6 and 7 deal
with identity formation and foreign policy under Boris Yeltsin (1992-1999) and Vladimir
Putin (2000-04), respectively. The concluding chapter summarizes the dissertation’s main
findings, details its theoretical implications, and outlines future research and policy
62
relevance. Finally, two appendices outline how the content analysis was conducted,
including selection rules and validity checks, and interview questions, respectively.
63
2
Paths of Ruin
When a king receives the Mandate [of Heaven], without limit is the grace thereof, but also without limit is the anxiety of it. How can he fail to be reverently careful?107
Why do revisionist states arise in world politics? Historically, the emergence of
rising powers such as Napoleonic France and Nazi Germany has meant the unfolding of
massive violence and disorder in international affairs. Indeed, the series of wars and
concentration camps that attended the quest for a “Greater Serbia” serve as a recent
reminder of the potential for upheaval and change that accompany revisionist states
irrespective of their size. Uncertainty also surrounds the nature of future challenges that
may arise from a nuclear-armed North Korea or a rising China. Against the backdrop of
these concerns, this dissertation aims to articulate and test generalizable propositions
about why and when revisionist states will subvert or violently challenge the international
status quo.
The dissertation begins from the premise that the distinction between revisionist
and status quo states is an identity variable. As such, the roots of revisionism lie not in
power imbalances or relative economic performance but rather in the content of a
collective identity that a regime uses to legitimate its rule. More specifically, it is the path
dependent properties of a regime’s collective identity project that can, under certain
circumstances, entrap the leadership into devising and pursuing revisionist strategies.108
Entrapment, here defined as the reduction over time of possible strategies available to a
regime, is the unexpected consequence that stems from the regime’s need to maintain the
normative coherence of its project in the face of domestic rivals.109 All regimes are 107 “Announcement of the Duke of Shao,” Book of Documents, Book XII, ca. 1000 BC. 108 For path dependent studies, see Mahoney 2001, 2000; Pierson 2003, 2000; Lieberson 1985:63-86. 109 On entrapment, see Schimmelfennig 2001; Risse 2000.
64
constrained by the nature of their legitimating projects and the rhetoric and institutions
they rely on to maintain it. Some collective projects, however, are especially prone to
generating entrapment pressures and can lead to “suboptimal” outcomes where the
regime is forced to adopt confrontational policies to stem the erosion of its legitimacy. In
essence, then, revisionist ambitions and realpolitik strategies arise from the specific
cultural content of the regime’s collective identity project rather than from the logic of an
anarchical international system.110
IDENTITY AS A VARIABLE
Before outlining the argument, however, the concept of identity adopted here
needs to be clearly defined. An identity can be regarded as a self-understanding that is
defined, projected, and modified through interaction with significant Others.111 Unlike
current theorizing in constructivism, we are not concerned here with a particular identity
but instead with what might be termed an “identity bundle.” This bundle, constructed by
elites for the purpose of regime legitimacy, consists of a collection of various identities
and categories of varying degrees of salience. An identity bundle cannot be reduced to a
single dimension – “democratic” or “authoritarian,” for example – nor can it collapsed
into a single national role conception.112 This goes beyond merely noting that states have
multiple identities that individually activate depending on the identity of the other state.
By relaxing the assumption that states have a single identity, we allow for the existence
110 On the need for a cultural explanation of realpolitik, see Johnston 2001: 508 and Johnston 1995. 111 This definition draws from Jepperson, Wendt, and Katzenstein in Katzenstein 1996: 59. 112 On fuzzy set variable, see Montgomery 2001, 2000; Ragin 2000: 153-59. On collapsing identity to a single role conception, see Wendt 1999: 259, Krotz 2001, Holsti 1970. One recent example of collapsing identity into a single measure is Nau 2002.
65
of contradictions in a regime’s bundle that can generate conflicting imperatives that must
be reconciled.113
This definition assumes that no clean distinction can be made between “domestic”
and “international” identities.114 Instead, we need to treat a regime’s collective identity
project as situated in both of these realms simultaneously. The regime is in effect a pivot
between the two spheres, and is forced to play a two-level identity game by juggling the
demands of maintaining legitimacy at home and abroad.115 Regimes may, of course, try
to maintain a barrier between these levels through the use of censorship, but ultimately
this is a porous measure that is readily bridged in practice.116
On one level, this is a highly instrumental conception of identity construction.
Identity is viewed here as a tool that elites use to socialize mass publics in a bid to cement
their allegiance to the regime.117 Moreover, there is an element of strategic calculation to
the choice of identity, or identities, that are marshaled to foster this allegiance. Those
identities judged as having the highest probability of resonating with publics are therefore
likely candidates for inclusion in the identity bundle. I also make no judgment about
whether elites actually believe their own rhetoric or whether elites have some cognitive
need for a particular identity. The argument rests not on elite cognition but rather on the
fact that rhetoric is sticky and that deviations from prior statements become increasingly
costly over time. As a consequence, this conception departs from standard constructivist
accounts of identity, where logics of appropriateness or habit govern an actor’s enactment
of a particular identity. 113 Sociologists are now turning to the question of the relationship between multiple identities. See Burke 2003; Stryker 2000; Stryker and Burke 2000; MacAdam and Paulsen 1993. On role conflict, see Cronin 2001; Giddens 1979: 118-19. For a psychological approach, see Ashmore, Deaux, and McLaughlin-Volpe 2004. 114 Maintaining this distinction is Wendt 1999: 224-30; 1994: 385-86. 115 Putnam 1988: 427-60. 116 China is perhaps the best example of a state that has aggressively used censorship to restrict information available to its citizens. See Zittrain and Edelman 2002. 117 For instrumentalist accounts, see Petersen 2002: 17-84; Hardin 1995; Hobsbawm and Ranger 1982: 1-14.
66
On the other hand, this understanding of an identity bundle is informed by
constructivist notions of identity as socially constructed. Collective identity, for example,
is not simply constructed in top-down fashion. Instead, society plays an important,
“bottom-up,” role in shaping the content of the identity bundle and thus in setting the
range of what constitutes appropriate action for the regime to pursue.118 Public
receptivity to elite rhetoric is treated as a variable here. Identity bundles are therefore
continually reproduced as the regime interacts with its society. Because not all elements
of society may accept the regime’s project, however, we also allow for the possibility that
collective identities can be contested, and changed, endogenously. Society in this view is
not simply a constraint on the actions of elites, but is in fact a key player in the
constitution of a collective identity project.
Moreover, while instrumentalist in nature, this conception of identity argues that
rhetoric has causal and constitutive properties. More specifically, rhetoric plays a two-
fold role in creating, rather than simply reflecting, reality. First, official rhetoric
establishes and reinforces popular expectations about regime performance. In particular, a
regime’s rhetoric publicly articulates the desired goals and aims of the political
community, thereby creating criteria for judgment of its efficacy. This rhetoric also
demarcates the realm of possible and appropriate strategies for the regime to adopt given
its particular vision of the collective community. Second, the regime’s rhetoric defines
the boundaries of the political community itself. The daily reproduction of the regime’s
project through either coercion or persuasion via media create categories of acceptable
behavior toward the regime. Opposition toward the regime (“deviance”) is therefore first
a rhetorical construction before it becomes practice.
118 Though I share Ted Hopf’s (2002) emphasis on the role of society in identity construction, I nonetheless view society as an actor (or actors) rather than a collection of discourses. See Hopf 2002: 1-12, 288-95.
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Note that in each case rhetoric need not track closely with material realities.
Regimes have often employed rhetorical stances directly out of proportion with their
capabilities. North Korea’s juche ideology, along with Saddam Hussein’s Ba’athism, are
two examples of identity projects that fostered allegiance through allusions to
international greatness that were not tied to objective economic or military
performance.119 We can also observe the causal impact of rhetoric over time if (1) it stays
consistent even if the original reasons for the choice of a project change or (2) it persists
despite changes in the structural environment (i.e. changes in the balance of power).
Given these constitutive and causal properties, rhetoric serves as more than a constraint
or rationalist “audience cost” on the regime. Without an understanding of the content of
the identity bundle or the role that a regime’s rhetoric plays in establishing popular
expectations, rationalist formulations are left unable to explain why some issues generate
audience costs while others do not. Put differently, cost is a social construction, one that
is defined by a regime’s rhetoric and reproduced through regime-society interaction.
Given this conception of collective identity as a bundle, we can construct a
typology of identity types that vary along two dimensions: (1) degree of exclusivity and
(2) degree of coherence. These dimensions help explain a regime’s propensity for
adopting revisionist or status quo policies. Let us take each dimension in turn.
119 Martin 2005: 317-47; Davis 2005: 1-28.
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Identity Type Degree of Coherence INCLUSIVE EXCLUSIVE
COHERENT
Conservative status
quo strategies
Risk-averse revisionist
strategies
FRAGMENTED
Reformist status quo
strategies
Gambling revisionist
strategies
Figure 2.1 The Impact of Identity on Grand Strategy.
The exclusivity of an identity refers to the degree to which the boundaries of the
political community are drawn on narrow grounds that marginalize actors either within or
outside society. In short, exclusivity refers to the extent to which the regime relies upon
policies of scapegoating as the principal means by which a sense of community is forged
and sustained over time. Nazi Germany’s vision of racial superiority and Serbia’s
collective ideal of a “Greater Serbia” were each predicated on totalizing identities that
fostered a sense of belonging through the exclusion and elimination of rival political
claims within their societies.
We should note, however, that the grounds for exclusion are not restricted to
solely nationalistic claims, but can in fact encompass religion, ethnicity, and even rival
political creeds. In the latter case, Napoleon III’s repression of the deviant socialist-
democratic movement during the early years of his regime was motivated in large part
because they advocated the adoption of a different vision of the French revolution as the
basis for Napoleon III’s rule. Targets for in-grouping pressures can also include aspects
of the international system itself, allowing a regime to generate cohesion and cement its
rule over society by railing against an external Other.
A number of structural features of an exclusive identity project also heighten the
probability that a regime will become entrapped. An exclusive identity tends to
69
delegitimize dissent by allowing the regime to brand the opposition as traitors, thus
generating a set of incentives to conform to the contours of the project. Popular support
behind an exclusivist project will also work to lengthen the time horizons of the regime,
permitting it to pursue a more patient foreign policy.120 Trouble arises, however, when
the starkness of the project and its rhetoric raises popular expectations of actions and
outcomes that are difficult, if not impossible, for the regime either to fulfill or to retreat
from without significant loss.
Moreover, the clarity of rhetoric makes it easier for groups to assess the regime’s
efficacy and to mobilize – at least in the absence of repression – against it if things begin
to sour. In addition, the use of political exclusion and repression will weaken the appeal
of actors for reform and will instead quickly radicalize into an anti-regime sentiment. If
opposition remains latent, regime fears may still be high because it cannot gauge the size
of the movement, creating an imperative to stay ahead of public opinion through
preemptory policies.
In short, the stark nature of an exclusive project, coupled with its bold claims and
the near inevitability of sparking at least some resistance, will generate incentives for a
regime to “feed success with success” in order to maintain the integrity of the
community’s boundaries.
By contrast, inclusive identities are marked by their acceptance and
legitimatization of deviance such that the boundaries of the community are not routinely
enforced coercively. In particular, these identities tend to generate in-group pressures
around a set of rules and institutions that are not identified with any one particular group
in society. Democracies, with their emphasis on a civic conception of collective identity,
spring to mind here. Even “losers” inside societies marked by inclusive identities possess
channels of redress and their claims are viewed as legitimate rather than denied,
120 Abdelal 2001: 45 notes the role played by nationalism in lengthening time horizons.
70
marginalized, or destroyed. This is not to idealize democracies, however, for some
domestic in-grouping may take place – on the eve of a war, for example – as a means of
mobilizing popular sentiment. Yet such occasions are the exception, whereas intense in-
grouping pressures are the norm for societies held together with an exclusive collective
identity. Indeed, efforts by democratic regimes to sustain such pressures usually collapse:
witness, for example, the poor record of democracies in fighting lengthy
counterinsurgency wars against weak opponents.121
Inclusive identities are not necessarily coterminous with democracies, however,
since other systems such as the Ottoman millet focus group allegiance around a central
coordinating point but also allow for the existence of regional identities. To be sure,
modern-day democracies are centered around a more inclusive collective identity than
nineteenth century empires, but this may not be the most appropriate comparison.
Instead, a glance at the status quo states of the nineteenth century (the Habsburg empire,
Russia until 1854, the British empire, France until 1848) reveals that all were predicated
on relatively inclusive projects that institutionalized differences rather than exclusive
nation-building projects. By contrast, those states that embarked on nationalizing drives,
notably, Prussia, France after 1848, Russia after 1856, and the Ottoman empire under the
Young Turks, all pursued some form of revisionist ambition.122 What is central, then, is
the comparative degree of exclusion that a regime employs in a given era to consolidate
its rule rather than a fixed standard of exclusiveness that is generalizable across all eras.
Second, the degree of coherence a collective project possesses acts as a source of
variation in the severity of entrapment of a regime on a revisionist path. Coherence here
refers not to the number of strands in a particular identity bundle but rather to the degree
121 Merom 2003: 48-63. Declining consent for war also leads democracies to sue for peace faster than authoritarian states. See Reiter and Stam 2002: 164-92. 122 Compare Russian treatment of Poles and Ukrainians in Poland and Ukraine with Austria’s treatment of these same nationalities in neighboring Galicia during the 1860s-70s. See Seton-Watson 1967: 410-412.
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to which these strands generate mutually compatible or contradictory behavioral
expectations. A coherent project is therefore one in which the salient strands interlock to
create interdependencies that reinforce the same expectations about what constitutes
appropriate behavior for the regime to pursue. Milosevic’s articulation of Serbian identity
represents one clear example of a coherent identity bundle. Combining Serbian
nationalism with an emphasis on shared grievances (“the myth of Kosovo”) and a leading
role for a “Greater Serbia,” Milosevic would bind together a coherent bundle that
produced imperatives toward war and ethnic cleansing.123
On the other hand, Napoleon III’s reliance on a blend of different strands such as
religion, conservatism, nationalism, and revolutionary ideals created conflicting
behavioral expectations that quickly outpaced the ability of the regime to satisfy.
Fragmented projects intensify the severity of entrapment because inherent contradictions
create opportunities around which the opposition can mobilize. As a result, regimes
resting on exclusivist and fragmentary identities are especially prone to adopt high-risk,
high-gain strategies as a means of squaring the contradictions implicit in their
legitimating projects. Fragmented identities can therefore be an inducement to action
rather than a recipe for paralysis. Coherent projects, by contrast, tend to be more durable
because they appear as obvious or natural since multiple strands are reinforcing the same
imperatives to action.
To conclude, we can hypothesize about the existence of generalizable paths to
revisionism by focusing on variation in the exclusivity and the coherence of an identity
project. Variation across these dimensions leads to robust patterns of behavior, as
outlined in Figure 2.1. Three hypotheses can also be advanced to test the proposed
relationship between collective identity and the probability that a regime will become
entrapped onto a revisionist pathway.
123 Rae 2002: 183-211; Judah 2000; Hayden 1996: 727-48.
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Proposition 1. The more exclusive a particular identity project is, the more likely it is to be subject to diminishing returns, thereby increasing the probability of entrapment Proposition 2. The more contradictory the various strands of an identity bundle are, the more possibilities exist for exploitation by opponents, thereby increasing the probability of entrapment Proposition 3. The greater the social distance between the regime’s legitimating principles and the normative content of international society, the greater the probability of entrapment
This last hypothesis deserves additional comment. A regime can find itself outside
of inter-national society in at least two circumstances. First, a regime can position itself
against international society for domestic legitimization purposes: contemporary North
Korea, the early Soviet Union, and communist Cuba are all examples here. In these cases,
the short-term payoff from defection was deemed to be more valuable to the regime in its
bid to consolidate its rule than the uncertain long-term gains that might have accrued
from adhering to, if not internalizing, the rules that govern international society.
Second, a regime can also articulate a fragmented identity project that bundles
potentially contradictory identity strands that create an imperative to reconcile these
demands by virtue of outward-looking strategies of revisionism. China’s use of official
nationalism at home while projecting an image as a “responsible power” at the
international level provides a good example of a second, fragmented, identity project.124
Thus, domestic legitimatization practices, such as scapegoating against a particular
segment of the population, may push a regime “beyond the pale” of international society.
Domestic legitimatization strategies therefore might encourage behavior directly at odds
with the maintenance of the regime’s international benefits; that is, the regime may be
124 See especially Gilley 2003: 18-26 and Zheng 1999.
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forced to engage in behavior that undermines the international system from which some
benefits at least are being derived.
THE PATH DEPENDENCE OF COLLECTIVE IDENTITY
The intuition that collective identities are persistent across time shares several
traits with current theorizing about the path dependency of political institutions. Path
dependency arguments, for example, rest on the premise that institutional outcomes can
be “locked-in” during a formative period (or “critical juncture”) of uncertainty. These
results are resistant to change because the costs of exit for a particular elite or set of
actors mount over time as increasing returns are generated by the institutional outcome.
These feedback processes also serve to reinforce the particular institutional path so that
some form of external shock is often required to induce a political system to change.125
In addition, the short-term horizons possessed by actors at the formative moment
of an institution can lead not only to the creation of unanticipated outcomes but also
suboptimal outcomes if viewed from the vantage point of society. As such, path
dependent arguments focus on both the origins of a particular institution and the
mechanisms of its reproduction that ensure its persistence even during times of flux. The
recognition that significant temporal separation may exist between the onset of a cause
and the emergence of its effect also necessitates the adoption of a more historical focus
than commonly found in rational choice accounts of actor behavior.
Despite these similarities, the argument proposed here diverges sharply from
conventional path dependency arguments in a number of ways. First, collective identity is
treated here as a political institution, a position that forces path dependent studies to
allow for the possibility that informal institutions can be equally as persistent as formal
125 Krasner 1984: 223-46.
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bodies. It is apt to characterize an identity bundle as a political institution because it has
both formal mechanisms of reproduction – the education system or ethnofederal
institutions, for example – as well as informal practices and norms that regulate behavior.
Second, scholars working in this tradition have yet to explore the possibilities of
anchoring path dependence arguments in the mechanisms associated with regime
legitimization.126
Indeed, a focus on legitimization sheds light on an alternative set of mechanisms
that can ensure path persistence but that do not rely on an increasing returns logic to
explain lock-in. Instead, a regime’s commitment to its identity project creates a need to
maintain the coherence and content of its bundle in the face of possible opposition.127
This commitment is underpinned by the knowledge that if a regime engages in behavior
inconsistent with its publicly stated ideals it opens the door to challenges from societal
actors about the appropriateness of its claims to rule. In part, then, it is the public nature
of a regime’s own rhetoric that makes its commitment to its collective identity project
difficult to recast. Efforts to project and institutionalize an identity bundle for
legitimatization purposes therefore rest on a logic of decreasing, rather than increasing,
returns.
Why? The articulation and institutionalization of an identity project creates a
focal point around which societal groups can mobilize in opposition.128 Drawing the
boundaries of a political community is an inherently political act, and thus may result in
the marginalization of certain segments of the population through scape-goating
strategies or through the continued denial of political claims by “losers” of previous
rounds of bargaining. The essence of the argument, then, is that regimes must constantly
126 For one exception see Bin Wong 1997: 105-27. 127 On the need to find additional mechanisms reproducing path stability, see Thelen 1999: 396-99. 128 On focal points, see Schelling 1960: 57-59, 92.
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work to stay ahead of the declining returns curve of their legitimating projects if they are
to avoid the rise of challengers that could topple their rule.
The notion of a political commitment as the mechanism behind the reproduction
of a path also clashes with constructivists who anchor their accounts of identity in
cognitive processes.129 In fact, there is a substantial body of literature in social
psychology that argues that individuals must maintain consistency between their self-
image and their actions to avoid debilitating cognitive dissonance. For example, our
understanding of mental illnesses such as schizophrenia rest on the assumption that
individuals who are unable to reconcile multiple self-images will be unable to function
properly. To minimize the dangers of conflict between identities, individuals will work
constantly to keep their social environment in alignment with their self-image.
Individuals, in other words, are consistency-maximizers, and will suffer performance
degradation and cognitive discomfort if placed in social situations that activate
overlapping and conflicting identities.130
While the logic of such arguments is appealing, there are several reasons to be
hesitant in applying insights derived from individuals or small groups to a collective actor
like a regime. The assumed psychological roots of the need for consistency may in fact be
only an artifact of Western conceptions of identity. Experiments have revealed, for
example, that Asian individuals possess a higher tolerance for identity inconsistencies
than their American counterparts.131 Moreover, the logic of the proposed argument does
not require either the ruling elites or the mass public to internalize the regime’s proposed
collective identity. Elites can still be entrapped in their public rhetoric even if they do not
129 See for example: Hopf 2002: 4-7; Checkel 2001, 1998: 324-48; Johnston 2001; Wendt 1999: 134. 130 Burke 2003; Cast, Stets, and Burke 1999: 68-82; Wellen, Hogg and Terry 1998: 48-56; Crano 1997: 485-91; Cialdini, Trost, and Newsom 1995: 318-28; Stryker and Macke 1978: 57-90. Two works in particular, Post 2004 and Taliaferro 2004, root leadership risk-taking in social psychology and prospect theory, respectively. 131 See especially Suh 2002: 1378-1391 and more generally Nisbett 2003: 165-85. On the need to separate psychological from other, more “political,” mechanisms, see Jervis 1992: xx.
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genuinely believe it, while the public may only be complying out of a fear of social
sanction (or worse). The social and public nature of the regime’s rhetoric, and the
attendant political costs associated with repeated inconsistencies between rhetoric and
action, are what serve to generate the lock-in effects that reproduce the regime’s
commitment to maintaining its collective project.
The argument’s emphasis on the regime’s constant need to reaffirm its basis of
legitimacy in the face of possible rivals fits neatly with recent calls to impart dynamism
to static path dependence explanations.132 By treating collective identity as a focal point,
we can examine the regime’s efforts to construct and maintain a legitimating framework
that is accepted by most citizens as well as attempts at resistance by marginalized groups.
Since socialization into an identity is not necessarily a function of time but is often an
end-result of political contestation, we need to examine how – and if – a regime is able
stay ahead of a diminishing returns curve by finding a stable equilibrium point and then
maintaining it. Because returns to an identity project diminish over time, change is
endogenous to the explanation in the form of either marginal adjustments by the regime
or steadily mobilizing opposition in response to perceived regime failures that ultimately
destroys the regime itself. In sum, the resilience or fragility of a regime is a function of
the content and contradictions of a regime’s identity bundle and its ability to
institutionalize this project as the uncontested basis of rule.
The following sections detail how the path dependent qualities of exclusive
identities can entrap regimes into the pursuit of revisionist strategies.
132 See especially Thelen 2003: 231-33 and Jones Luong 2002: 25-50.
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EXCLUSIVE IDENTITIES AND THE PATHS TO REVISIONISM I. THE FORMATIVE PERIOD
All leaders, regardless of era or regime type, must engage in some form of
identity project to foster citizen (subject) identification with the regime and thus ensure
continued stability of rule.133 As Heather Rae notes, state identities play a crucial role in
establishing the right of the regime to rule as well as the legitimacy of the order that it
seeks to create.134 This is especially true during formative moments of “thickened
history,” where waves of events and collapsing ancien regime institutions create space
for the articulation of a different collective vision by either the embattled regime or its
rivals.135
We are particularly interested in the content and the coherence of the identity
bundle that emerges from this period because it acts as a standard or yardstick by which
the regime’s purposes, and its successes in attaining stated ambitions, can be measured by
societal and international actors. In turn, the articulation of a collective identity creates
the possibility of sanctioning the regime for deviations from its stated basis of rule.
These initial moments of identity formation are often marked by uncertainty,
contingency, and strategic action by aspirants to power.136 Yet would-be leaders are not
faced with a tabula rasa on which to inscribe their own particular visions of collective
identity. Instead, this critical juncture is perhaps best characterized as a time of “bounded
contingency,” where the options available to leaders is restricted by the range of identities
that are culturally possible at a given time. Put differently, there is a collective stock of
culturally available identities from which actors can draw, but only a handful of identity
133 On legitimacy, see Weber 1978 (Volume I): 33-38, 212-15 and Weber 1978 (Volume II): 901-04. 134 Rae 2002: 2. 135 On “thickened history,” see Beissinger 2002: 27, 42-43. 136 Bunce and Csanadi 1993: 240-75.
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strands will be backed with sufficient resources and with sufficient popular resonance to
be chosen.137
Identities, then, are socially constructed, but they are not infinitely elastic nor are
they readily adopted by the mass public if prior identities, whether formal or informal,
have not yet been discredited. Similarly, leaders must also take into account the fact that
their choice of legitimating identity has repercussions at the international level as well.
International society also has a collective stock of acceptable forms of legitimacy that can
diminish or enhance the attractiveness of a particular identity bundle.
Moreover, the content of an identity bundle cannot be reducible to material
asymmetries or ascribed simply as equal to the elite’s preferences, as argued by rational
choice institutionalism. To be sure, power asymmetries are crucial for anchoring identity
projects by wielding coercive force or through the creation of formal political institutions
and patronage networks. The media also plays a central role, though often
unacknowledged by scholars, in shaping the realm of political possibilities in a manner
favorable to the new regime’s collective vision.138
As a consequence, we cannot simply map the contours of a regime’s collective
project from its material advantages since (1) contingency during this initial stage may
force concessions that deflect the regime from its desired aims while (2) the act of
constructing a particular project may itself generate opposition from those excluded or
marginalized by the new definition of the collectivity. The very act of entrenching a
particular project, then, in the face of opposition can lead to unexpected consequences
and outcomes that sharply contradict the presumed interests and preferences of a ruling
elite.
Yet can a coherent identity bundle (or a focal point) emerge under conditions of
uncertainty? Indeed, the uncertainty that marks critical junctures actually creates
137 Swidler 1986. 138 On the general neglect of the media as political institutions, see Schudson 2002: 249-69.
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pressures for both claimants on power and new regimes to maintain consistency in
rhetorical appeals as a way of creating a reputation that can be mobilized to garner
support.139 The demands of product differentiation and of building some credibility
among a populace will therefore impose at least some coherence on identity projects. The
demands of political contestation will also lead to the creation of what social identity
theorists term a “minimal group,” in which stark language and basic categorizations are
used to rally support at a time when even shared histories are undergoing reinterpretation.
Such identities are especially prone to in-group favoritism because they rest on simple
categorizations such as ethnic nationalism that are viewed as the sole basis of self-esteem
and community membership.140
Power asymmetries can also foster the creation and maintenance of a particular
identity bundle since coercion can be used to solidify the boundaries of political
community violently. State formation is an inherently violent process, and in extreme
cases efforts to construct a collective identity can generate pressures for the “pathological
homogenization” of a people through the violent repression of deviants within a
population.141 The destruction of a rival’s claims to power may also skew the regime’s
project so severely that it is forced to institutionalize its rule on a precariously narrow
ideational base that makes future reforms difficult because opposition has been
delegitimized so starkly. For example, Napoleon III’s repression of the socialist
movement in France during the early days of his regime would give his regime a starkly
conservative cast that would make it difficult politically to make future concessions that
may have solidified his rule (see Chapter Three). Much like a rock formation, then, the
striations of an identity project will be forged in the heat of a “shock” to the existing state
or regime.
139 Actors may therefore have longer time horizons than suggested by strategic bargaining models. 140 Turner 1987; Tajfel 1982. See also Coser 1955 and Simmel 1955: 87-124. 141 Rae 2002: 14-55.
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II. THE REPRODUCTION OF IDENTITY COMMITMENT
The emergence of a victor in the struggle for power marks only the beginning,
rather than the end, of the story, however. Indeed, a new regime’s legitimacy, if not its
fate, is now tied to its ability to reproduce and institutionalize its collective identity as the
“only game in town.” As such, we need to account not only for the origins of a particular
project but also for its persistence, especially if its maintenance leads to a “suboptimal”
outcome. Here, the mechanism that creates ideational “lock-in” is not increasing returns
but rather the notion of political commitment.142 Put simply, the regime’s own ideational
architecture, constructed (often violently) in the face of opposition, imposes on it a
commitment to retain normative coherence if it is not to open itself to further challenge
and possible ouster by opponents seeking to exploit contradictions between rhetoric and
action. Moreover, the mere presence of formal institutions in the aftermath of a regime or
state crisis should not lead us to conclude that a regime’s collective project will be
reproduced seamlessly. Instead, these institutions are bound to be weak and still
contested, and thus unreliable mechanisms of reproduction. As such, a regime must
continually engage a daily rhetorical defense or “fine-tuning” of its project.
A regime’s identity commitment is also deepened by the size of the peer group(s)
and the density of the networks that interconnect the regime and other relevant actors.
Crucially, a regime’s legitimacy project is an extraordinarily public creation, one that
ensures that the pressures for conformity stemming from heightened visibility in both the
international and domestic arenas will be particularly pronounced. Membership in
international organizations, for example, may create added pressure to remain consistent
with prior rhetoric lest the regime incur significant penalties in a highly open forum.
Similarly, the public nature of rhetoric can generate concerns on the part of the regime
142 On identity commitment see Stryker and Burke 2002; Burke and Reitzes 1991; cf. Becker 1960.
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that its deviations will be highlighted and that substantial costs may be incurred if
generalized popular expectations concerning the appropriateness of the regime’s actions
are violated at this early stage.
This sensitivity to perceived violations of its own collective project affects even
the most despotic regime. New evidence suggests, for example, that the most pressing
concern of the new Communist regime in China was its apparent inability to meet the
popular expectations that its own claims had generated over the course of a bloody civil
war. Yet, rather than scale back its claims, the regime forged ahead with the construction
of “appropriate” institutions and the massive purging of all possible forms of dissent. The
Campaign to Suppress Counter-Revolutionary Activities was launched during the Korean
War as a means of bringing popular expectations into alignment with the dictates of the
regime’s vision for China (not vice versa). Some two million citizens, most of whom had
not actively opposed the new regime, were executed or disappeared.143 Similarly, a desire
to cement China’s revolutionary credentials in international affairs would lead Mao to
commit military forces in the Korean war despite his misgivings and the still-ongoing
civil war. This “victory” in Korea, purchased at the cost of 152,000 dead Chinese, was in
turn used domestically to demonstrate the correctness of the regime’s project and the
folly of dissent against it.144
We might also imagine that returns will accrue to the regime if it manages to
maintain the normative coherence of its project. For example, the institutionalization of
an identity will force those who do not share the government’s particular vision to
conform or face social sanctions.145 As such, the successful articulation and defense of a
collective project may make it more difficult for regime opponents to challenge the
regime effectively. Compliance, if not internalization, with the regime’s project translates
143 Westad 2003: 227-325; Strauss 2002: 80-105. 144 Westad 2003: 297-325; Jian 1994. 145 See Kuran 1995: 85-88 for his discussion of “expressive constraints.”
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in turn into heightened stability for the regime and thus a greater chance to construct
institutions that reflect the normative content of the regime’s project. Viewed with a
wider time horizon, socialization through institutions such as the media, education
system, and military service, cements citizen identification with the regime on the
cultural foundation favored by the government itself.146 As a consequence, the daily
reproduction of a consistent line through formal institutions as well as informal practices
will, over time, act to further bind both the regime and its citizens to the maintenance of a
shared standard of rule.
To date, studies of path dependency have largely ignored the question of how to
measure these returns. Unfortunately, there is no one single measure that is applicable
across all eras, owing to variation in identity projects as well as data limitations. Still,
there are a number of measures that can be used to capture accruing returns. Poll data
can, for example, offer one window into the success a regime is having in
institutionalizing its identity project. If public perceptions of the new institutions rise over
time, or rise relative to perceptions of former institutions, then we can conclude that the
project is indeed being favorably received. Similarly, trends of public optimism toward
the current institutions can also illustrate if the direction the regime is deemed
appropriate. Rates of collective action such as strikes and anti-regime protests can also be
used to assess if a regime’s project is being met with approval.147 Degrees of tax evasion
and desertion also provide a similar bellwether of the regime’s legitimacy. Moreover,
rates of religious or linguistic assimilation can also be drawn on to gauge the successful
penetration of a regime’s identity project. Finally, the level of popular support for regime
symbols and holidays, as well as for institutions that the regime chooses to valorize (like
146 E. Weber 1979. 147 Not all forms of collective protest should be considered “anti-project.” Only those protests and actions that challenge a core component of the regime’s project (including advocating its replacement) should be considered evidence of diminishing returns.
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the military), can suggest whether socialization, or at least tacit consent, is promoting
adherence to a given project.
Returns can also accrue from membership in international society if a regime
articulates a collective identity that is consonant with its prevailing normative standards.
Such returns include recognition (an excludable good), a reduction in uncertainty through
adherence to shared standard of conduct, greater access to material resources, and
prestige opportunities for a regime. Note that these gains may in fact operate according to
an increasing returns logic. Nonetheless, once we consider the domestic side of the story
in conjunction with international gains, we are thrust back into the realm of declining
returns. Returns to a regime domestically are subject to erosion over time, and the slope
of the declining curve becomes steeper the more exclusive a particular identity project is,
as outlined above. In short, the regime’s commitment forces it to maneuver constantly to
ensure that its returns outpace the rate of their erosion.
III. THE MECHANISMS OF ENTRAPMENT
There are at least two mechanisms through which a regime may find itself
entrapped. First, the nature of a regime’s collective identity project may spark the
mobilization of opposition among domestic audiences. In this case, collective identity
acts as a focal point around which resistance can form and mobilize, forcing a regime to
work harder to maintain the coherence of its project. Second, the familiar dynamics of the
security dilemma can reinforce a regime’s commitment to its project by hardening a
particular identity project and by raising the costs of a public failure. Though these two
mechanisms appear to be operating at different levels – one domestic, the other
international – it is important to note that these processes often influence and reinforce
one another. This section details each of these mechanisms, beginning first with the
mobilization of resistance to a regime’s project.
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In some ways, entrapment is a self-fulfilling prophesy.148 Indeed, regimes that rest
their rule atop a foundation of exclusive rhetoric are faced with a basic dilemma: there is
a positive relationship between the exclusivity of an identity project and the rise of
opposition. Simply put, the construction of a focal point by one group (here, the regime)
makes it easier for others to mobilize against it by facilitating the process of
organizing.149 Though focal points are commonly viewed as solutions to coordination
problems among a set of actors, there is no reason to assume that new opposing actors
could not arise as well. The starker a regime’s rhetoric, for example, and the more
exclusive its view of the political community, the more the regime’s legitimating
framework is clarified and thus the easier it is for groups to counter-mobilize against it.
Much like a spotlight, then, an exclusive project acts as a beacon that opposition groups
or external actors can assess a regime’s intent and counter-mobilize in opposition. We
might label this process of clarification the “spotlight effect.”
Efforts to construct and maintain a collective identity project enables resistance to
arise from several quarters. Opposition may be sparked, for example, among existing
groups who are threatened by marginalization or worse in the emerging framework of
rule. The implementation of new policies designed to foster a sense of political
community may also lead to the emergence of new actors who oppose the collective
project. For example, the decision to define a nascent Pakistani nation around the Urdu
language – spoken by less than seven per cent of Pakistan’s population – fostered the rise
of a previously nonexistent Bengali nationalism that ultimately produced a bloody
secessionist drive.
Moreover, a regime might also experience opposition from its own supporters if it fails to
implement its plans with sufficient haste or success. Pakistan experienced 11 changes of
government between 1947 and 1971, most due to the fact that the regime was viewed as
148 Merton 1968 [1948]: 475-90. 149 Schwartz 2000: 11.
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unable to implement the nation-building project fast enough to satisfy key societal actors
(see Chapter Three).
Collective identities may also have spatially uneven consequences across and
within various populations of a political community.150 The notion that a population’s
internalization of a collective project is variable means that the regime may be forced to
tailor its message to specific audiences or, failing that, may seek to destroy or repress
rival claims. Reliance on selective themes and coercion will, however, introduce
contradictions into a regime’s rhetoric while creating greater incentive for rival groups to
engage in collective action. Even if a substantial percentage of the population does accept
the regime’s collective vision as appropriate, the presence of a sizable minority capable
of calling attention to gaps between rhetoric and reality may be enough to generate
pressure on the regime to conform to its prior statements. In sum, we cannot simply
assign “an” identity to a state as if its distribution was uniform; instead, we need to
examine the politics of identity maintenance to determine if and how a regime is
successfully institutionalizing its identity project.
Yet while collective identities may facilitate coordination, we should not lose
sight of the fact that this focal point is heavily imbued with normative content. Resistance
to a regime arises not solely out of a desire for power but also because of fundamental
disagreement over the grounds on which the regime is legitimating itself. In a sense, the
struggle is waged over the appropriateness of the self-image that a regime relies upon for
legitimacy and the rules and expectations that flow from such an image. The specific
content of a regime’s collective identity project is what makes the emergence of
challengers possible and what provides the rhetorical “ammunition” for the struggle
between ruler and ruled. Accordingly, this concern with the normative content of a focal
point pushes this argument outside of a rationalist-functionalist framework and forces us
150 On the importance of treating in-group affiliation as a variable, see Gorenburg 2000 and Giuliano 2000.
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to recognize that focal points may not simply engender cooperation but can also facilitate
contestation.
Resistance is therefore enabled by contradictions in a regime’s rhetoric and by the
spaces that emerge between its rhetoric and actions.151 Some regimes, especially those
astride exclusive identities, may have centers of gravity that are particularly susceptible
to the kind of pressure that even partially organized groups can bring to bear. Wielding
the regime’s own rhetoric, these groups can exploit pressure points where the regime will
be compelled to act in order to safeguard its legitimacy. More specifically, each regime’s
identity project consists of a hierarchy of identity markers or attributes that are stressed
with relative rates of frequency. The more a regime relies on a particular marker – say,
ethnicity – the greater certainty we have that a regime will be sensitive to opposition that
challenges the centrality of this marker. In other words, as we climb the hierarchy of
markers that a regime legitimates itself with, the regime becomes increasingly sensitive
to challenges and thus vulnerable to entrapment. Similarly, rhetorical consistency across
multiple public settings will both height the possibility of entrapment and the “pain”
experienced by a regime for hypocrisy.
Note, too, that regimes need not be democratic for entrapment to occur. Indeed,
none of the cases treated in this dissertation are democracies, even by the standards of the
day. Quite clearly, these regimes are not truly accountable to their citizens; they are,
however, vulnerable to them. As such, regimes must constantly sample public opinion
and, if possible, anticipate it, to prevent the rise of a corrosive opposition that will erode
the regime’s legitimacy.
Opposition therefore need not be as strong as the “privileged” group in order to
pressure the regime to defend the basis of its legitimacy.152 This is true even in despotic
regimes, where despite the exercise of coercion sufficient room usually exists for the
151 O’Brien 1996 terms this form of opposition “rightful resistance.” See also Scott 1990: 90-107. 152 Olson 1971: 49-50.
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creation of information-sharing private networks that can erode the regime’s position.
These networks play a key role in what Neta Crawford terms the “denormalization” and
subsequent delegitimation of dominant beliefs because they act to raise questions about
what was previously seen as normal and immutable.153 Coercion alone is not enough to
stabilize an identity project, and thus the existence, if only subterranean, of such networks
represents a threat that the regime must counter. The persuasiveness of these alternative
appeals rests on the ability of such networks to draw attention to the contradictions
inherent in a regime’s rhetoric or to the inappropriateness of its identity project as a
whole.
At its most simple, then, the politics of identity maintenance are waged at the
micro level of the street or the kitchen table. In contemporary Russia, for example,
opposition to Putin’s policies in Chechnya largely takes the form of small demonstrations
– often fewer than 20 people participate – in highly symbolic locations in Moscow or St.
Petersburg. To persuade passers-by of their argument, these groups often mount text of
Putin’s speeches on placards together with information gleaned from outside sources that
directly contradicts the official line. These networks have succeeded in forming and
persisting despite an extensive censorship apparatus and the use of legal and extra-legal
forms of repression by the government. Indeed, the sizable effort involved in monitoring
and controlling these ostensibly small rallies indicates the level of concern the regime has
over the prospect of these networks encouraging popular disaffection (see Chapter
Seven).154
Mark Beissinger’s distinction between “quiet” and “noisy” phases of mobilization
offers a useful framework for the study of the evolution of identity contestation. During
153 Crawford 2002: 101-03. 154 On 1 February 2003, 500 people gathered to protest in one of the largest anti-war rallies since Putin assumed office. They were met with between 500 and 1000 police officers. Author’s observation. See also “Demokraty ob”edinilis protiv voiny [Democrats United Against War]” Nezavisimaya gazeta, 3 February 2003.
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“quiet” periods, the regime remains dominant and the struggle is centered on efforts to
impose a particular order as those who object remain marginalized. The foundations of
future open resistance are laid in this period, however, as marginalized actors nonetheless
work to accumulate the resources and networks that will make opposition possible when
conditions are more propitious. “Noisy” periods, by contrast, are marked by open and
repeated challenge to the regime and its formal and informal institutions as the
consequence of a favorable shift in the political opportunity structure.155
This interplay between the regime and its opponents helps to impart a dynamism
that is mostly absent from current path dependency arguments. Indeed, the existence of
positive feedback explains why actions designed to create one outcome – the
consolidation of an identity project – can produce the opposite effect, namely, provoking
opposition.156 As a consequence, the harder the regime works to maintain its project, the
more likely it is that resistance will intensify, necessitating the adoption of even stricter
policies if the regime is to avoid a legitimacy crisis. Yet as collective action moves from
its “quiet” to its “noisy” phase, the pressure on the regime to conform to its prior rhetoric
also heightens, forcing the regime to “run” harder just to maintain its position.
It should be noted, however, that this discussion of the possibility of conflicting
identity strands runs partially counter to the idea that symbols or actions can be
interpreted coherently from multiple perspectives simultaneously. This trait, often
referred to as “multivocality,” suggests that regimes can stave off dissent by couching
their rhetorical claims in ambiguous language that appeals to all.157 Yet there are limits
beyond which ambiguity can be stretched. If audiences share information and coordinate
among themselves, then a regime will be forced to reconcile cross-cutting pressures
precisely because a symbol is ambiguous. Audiences may mobilize and compete to 155 Beissinger 2002: 26-27, 150-51. 156 On feedback processes, see especially Pierson 2003: 195-98; Mahoney 2000: 507-48; Jervis 1997: 125-76. 157 Padgett and Ansell 1993: 1263; Ansell 1997. See also Goddard 2003.
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ensure that the regime abides by preferred interpretations of a symbol, placing the regime
in an awkward, and often dangerous, situation. Moreover, some situations, notably at the
outset of identity politics, lead would-be rulers to send clear signals so that they may be
heard above the din of politics; this is precisely how reputations are made and support
captured for a particular identity project. At the very least, then, we must recognize that a
regime’s ability to juggle competing identity strands and expectations that arise from
them is a variable.
Pressures on the regime to adopt increasingly assertive policies are also reinforced
through the dynamics of the security dilemma at the international level. The security
dilemma is said to be endemic to anarchic international systems and exists because
“many of the means by which a state tries to increase its security decrease the security of
others.”158 Regimes sitting atop exclusivist identity projects will find, for example, that
repeated interactions with other states – particularly those that the regime is demonizing –
will only intensify its commitment to its project. The hardening of hostile rhetoric and
images in turn reduces the regime’s maneuvering room by making concessions and de-
escalation politically infeasible. What is propelling this intensification of the security
dilemma is not, however, the anarchical nature of the international system but rather the
content and the possible contradictions inherent in the identity bundles of the
participating states.159
While prevailing accounts of the security dilemma assume fixed actor interests, it
is probable that regimes caught in these spirals will find their interests and identities
shifting in a more conflictual direction. This becomes clear if we examine the
microfoundations of the security dilemma.160 Disputes act to reinforce a regime’s
158 Jervis 1978: 169. 159 John Vasquez argues that security dilemmas can strengthen the hand of hard-liners domestically, making aggressive policies more likely. I argue, in contrast, that it is the content and contradictions of an identity project, now clarified and intensified through the security dilemma, that makes such policies more likely. See Vasquez 1993: 198-224, especially 213-14. 160 On the need to “go micro” in the study of the security dilemma, see Johnston 2004: 69.
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commitment to its past rhetoric because failures are now highly visible and politically
costly. Moving to protect their legitimacy, regimes will intensify their language, often
using scapegoating rhetoric to demonize another state on a particular issue. This “malign
amplification”161 of a regime’s language sets in motion the “hardening” of a identity as
pressures mount on the regime to match its increasing strident rhetoric with concrete
actions. These public exchanges between regimes follow an escalatory logic, as each
regime is forced to compete not only with its interlocutor but also with the expectations
of its citizens. Moreover, the public nature of these disputes clarifies the stakes for each
regime: failures, now magnified by the glare of publicity, threaten to flame domestic
dissatisfaction with the regime and thus empower regime opposition.
The more sustained and heated these exchanges between regimes become, the
more likely it is that the issue at stake will be defined as indivisible. 162 As a consequence,
a regime seeking only a prestige victory may find that it is unable to exit a crisis without
first obtaining some sizable return decidedly out of proportion with the original issue at
stake. Taiwan may hold such significance for the legitimacy of China’s current regime.163
Unable to stomach, or perhaps survive, a loss on these key issues, regimes will find their
options precipitously skewed in favor of risky strategies that promise a decisive
resolution. Negotiation and compromise, on the other hand, are removed as viable
choices because prior rhetoric and current scapegoating do not permit a climb-down.
Rather than update their preferences in light of new information, as rationalist literature
would expect, regimes escalate because the issue at stake is tied directly to the regime’s
project – and its survival (see Chapter One).
161 Johnston 2004: 48. 162 Toft 2003; Lustick 1993: 41-46. 163 Swaine 2004; Christensen 2001: 18-20.
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Even more alarmingly, these disputes may spillover into other issue areas,
rendering a grand strategy even more rigid and uncompromising even in areas not
directly related to matters at hand.
This hardening of a regime’s identity project is amenable to empirical
measurement. One simple measure would be to track changes in the relative salience of a
particular issue over time. A more detailed approach would be to measures changes in the
frequency of exclusivist rhetoric in a given period of time across a standard unit of
text.164 Grievances, for example, offer one window into the radicalization of a particular
regime’s rhetoric: sharp increases in the frequency or the intensity of such sentiments
relative to prior periods may indicate a reordering of the relative salience of identity
markers in a regime’s identity project. A final possible measure of a regime’s rhetoric as
it undergoes hardening is the degree of its “integrative complexity.”165 It is reasonable to
assume that as regimes seek to rally support or demonize a rival the complexity of their
rhetoric decreases as simple tropes and themes are continually repeated.
Central to this view of the security dilemma as a social mechanism is the
understanding that “a” dilemma is really a series or string of multiple interactions at the
micro level. This sequence of moves is marked by ascending rates of exclusivist rhetoric
and descending time intervals between rhetorical offensives that gradually narrow a
regime’s choice set. Regimes, then, are similar to rocks skipping across water, their
motion being slowly dissipated until they are pulled beneath the surface.166
164 As represented by X/Y*(z) where X = is the number of exclusivist markers, Y = the amount of time, and z = the standardized unit of text (i.e. number of words). Similarly, the hierarchy of identity markers in a regime’s project may be reordered in a more exclusivist direction through multiple iterations of a security dilemma. 165 Wallace, Suedfeld, and Thachuk 1993: 94-107 and Tetlock 1985: 1565-85. 166 The analogy is inexact: while the chemical properties of the rock do not change through interaction, a regime’s identity project does, becoming “harder” through a series of conflicts that comprise a security dilemma.
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A shallow or emergent security dilemma can therefore deepen into an entrenched
conflict if it acts to heighten a regime’s vulnerabilities, entrench certain strands of an
identity project, or silence domestic critics who were emphasizing alternative (less
conflictual) strands of collective identity.167
Standard treatments of the security dilemma would argue, however, that such
dilemmas are not possible with revisionist states. Indeed, it at least the spiral model of the
security dilemma, states are thought to be fear-driven actors that cannot reach a
cooperative arrangement due to uncertainty over each other’s motives.168 I believe, by
contrast, that a security dilemma may actually help create a revisionist and may deepen
that revisionism over time. A regime may begin with a status quo identity, for example,
but through repeated interaction arrives at Deadlock with another state because an issue
has become indivisible.169 Moreover, if by “fear” we mean regime survival, then it is
clear that a revisionist regime can be enmeshed in a security dilemma; indeed, it is more
likely to become so than a status quo regime. Indeed, a dilemma may exist for a
revisionist because it may be forced to escalate a crisis to a point beyond where its
original intentions or military capabilities would have led it. In sum, even weakly status
quo states may find their identities sliding toward revisionism as the mechanism of the
security dilemma necessitates the hardening of identities and the adoption of risky
policies. IV. PATHS OF RUIN: BUT HOW STEEP?
Upon ascending to the Russian throne in 1796, Tsar Paul I immediately undertook
action that would be familiar to all rulers: he tried to sample public opinion. Indeed, he
167 On shallow and deep security dilemmas, see Wendt 1999 and Jervis 2001: 41. 168 Jervis 1976; Jervis 2001: 39-40. 169 That is, through the mechanism of the security dilemma a regime’s understanding of the “game” being played can shift in a more conflictual direction even if the game was originally conceived of as cooperative in nature (i.e. a Stag Hunt).
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affixed a lockbox (he held the only key) to the exterior wall of the Winter Palace so his
subjects could write their feed-back to him personally. The initiative was discontinued
quickly, however, when a spate of hostile letters denouncing the new ruler was received.
Five years later, Paul I would be assassinated in his bedchamber, having failed to detect
mounting opposition among the nobility against his rule.170
The example of Tsar Paul I speaks to a broader point about regimes needing to
know how their projects are being received among the public and key constituencies.
This is especially true of regimes anchoring themselves in exclusivist identities, which
carry the inherent risk of sparking the mobilization of counter-resistance. Just how
quickly pressure mounts on a regime is a function of the degree of exclusivity and
fragmentation of its identity project. A regime seeking to institutionalize an exclusive and
fragmented project will quickly reach its threshold for the tolerance of opposition because
the contradictions of its own framework provide fodder for rivals. These regimes exhibit
a propensity for the adoption of revisionist strategies that is best captured by an s-curve,
where even modest amounts of criticism can compel the regime to pursue ever-riskier
strategies as a means of avoiding potential losses. By contrast, regimes that base their
legitimacy on exclusive but coherent projects possess a higher threshold for the tolerance
of dissent. This is due in large measure to the fact that opposition can be easily branded
as traitorous while the framework itself has few inherent contradictions that can be seized
upon for mobilization purposes by would-be opponents. These revisionist pathways are
compared in Figure 2.1.
170 Ruud and Stepanov 1999: 14-15.
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Yet what affects the rate at which revisionist regimes ascend their respective
curves? It is important to note that many of the mechanisms that regimes rely upon to
project and institutionalize their projects often generate unintended consequences. Here I
outline several factors that can inadvertently raise the risk of entrapment, causing regimes
to move up their revisionist paths at a faster clip. These factors “spotlight” the regime’s
exclusivist project, creating strong incentives to cling to a project rather than recast its
boundaries and content.
First, the use of censorship to restrict the range of public discourse to
“appropriate” topics and to suppress rivals paradoxically heightens the pressure on a
regime to remain consistent with its prior rhetoric.171 This is so for two reasons. First, it
171 See Deutsch 1957 for an early attempt to argue that mass communications reduce freedom in decision-making.
PROBABILITY OFPURSUING REVISIONISM
1
0
DEGREE OF SOCIETALPRESSURE ON REGIME
LOW HIGH
FRAGMENTED IDENTITY
COHERENT IDENTITY
FIGURE 2.1 PATHS OF RUIN: REVISIONIST TENDENCIES OF EXCLUSIVE IDENTITIES OVER TIME
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narrows the range of acceptable opposition, thereby silhouetting the regime’s own project
more starkly, aiding the mobilization of rivals. This is because censorship focuses citizen
attention squarely on the regime, making it easier to discern contradictions between
rhetoric and action.
Second, it “dirties” the information available to the regime about the “true” nature
of public opinion, creating an incentive for the regime to “stay ahead” of perceived public
opinion by preemptively defending its basis of legitimacy. The use of both overt and
covert means of censorship (including self-censorship) essentially deprives the regime of
key societal signals of approval or disapproval that are broadcast in public media, forcing
the regime to rely on its own public statements as signposts for action.172
Regimes have historically sought to elide these pressures by building substantial
domestic surveillance organs. Ironically, however, these same bodies may actually
intensify entrapment dangers because they have an incentive both to underreport and
overestimate the levels of societal dissent, further clouding the regime’s view of public
opinion. As such, censorship creates an incentive for the regime to try to stay ahead of
public opinion – or what it thinks is public opinion – by preemptively defending the basis
of its legitimacy. These regimes are therefore marked by their extreme sensitivity to
perceived shifts in public opinion even if the masses are largely excluded from any
meaningful electoral role.173
Concessions granted by a regime under duress, for example, may only exacerbate
the pressures on the regime to silence its critics and recoup losses through gains on the
international stage. Even if formal political institutions are viewed as malleable by the
regime, their capture and conversion by critics – if only small in number – provides a
172 Though scholars have noted the “framing effects” of media, there has been much less systemic study of the effect of censorship on the (de)mobilization of opposition. On framing effects, see Snow and Benford 1988: 197-217. On the mixed record of the internet in mobilizing opposition in authoritarian states, see Kalathil and Boas 2003: 135-53. 173 This is often a hallmark of “managed” democracies. See Ottaway 2003; Diamond 2002: 21-35; Levitsky and Way 2002: 51-65; Snyder and Mansfield 2002: 297-337.
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perch from which further opposition can be mounted and collective action against the
regime subsidized.174 Formal institutions, then, may not be producing the intended
legitimating effects but may instead be eroding the regime’s basis of rules, prompting it
to “run” faster up the slope of revisionism to maintain its rule.
The international environment can also conspire to entrap a regime. In particular,
the security dilemma acts as a mechanism that intensifies the difficulties a regime faces in
maintaining its identity project. More specifically, the security dilemma impacts
collective identity in four ways. First, repeated interaction with another state threatening a
core aspect of the identity project will lead regimes to mobilize public sentiment for
action using exclusivist scapegoating rhetoric. Moving to protect their legitimacy,
regimes will intensify their language, often using scapegoating rhetoric to demonize
another state on a particular issue.
Second, the security dilemma acts as a “spotlight” that highlights the gap between
escalating regime rhetoric, prior claims, and the actions it is currently pursuing. Because
rhetoric facilitates collective action, regimes can face opposition from either critics who
argue for standing down in a crisis (at the cost of some or all of the regime’s legitimacy)
or advocate fulfilling stated aims. Security dilemmas therefore create incentives for a
regime to over-fulfill the plan. A shallow or emergent security dilemma can therefore
deepen into an entrenched conflict if it acts to heighten a regime’s vulnerabilities,
entrench certain strands of an identity project, or silence domestic critics who were
emphasizing alternative (less conflictual) strands of collective identity.175 Here, the
provision of information can actually lead a regime to escalate its demands, rather than
retrench them, because of the costs (and possible benefits) are clear.
Third, by intensifying the exclusivist strands of an identity project, the security
dilemma can prune a regime’s decision tree to a few or even a single branch: escalation.
174 Alexander 2001: 249-70. See also Thelen 2003: 225-30. 175 On shallow and deep security dilemmas, Jervis 2001: 40-41.
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The more sustained and heated these exchanges between regimes become, the more
likely it is that the issue at stake will be defined as indivisible.176 As a consequence, a
regime seeking only a prestige victory may find that it is unable to exit a crisis without
first obtaining some sizable return decidedly out of proportion with the original issue at
stake. Taiwan may hold such significance for the legitimacy of China’s current regime.177
Unable to stomach, or perhaps survive, a loss on these key issues, regimes will find their
options precipitously skewed in favor of risky strategies that promise a decisive
resolution.
Negotiation and compromise, on the other hand, are removed as viable choices
because prior rhetoric and current scapegoating do not permit a climb-down. Rather than
update their preferences in light of new information, as rationalist literature would expect,
regimes escalate because the issue at stake is tied directly to the regime’s project – and its
survival. Even more alarmingly, these disputes may spillover into other issue areas,
rendering a grand strategy even more rigid and uncompromising even in areas not
directly related to matters at hand.
Finally, the security dilemma clarifies the costs of failure for a regime. Backed
into a corner by the weight of its prior claims, entrapped regimes grasp onto increasingly
high risk strategies as a means of scoring gains and recouping losses. Regimes, in other
words, “gamble for resurrection”178 in the hopes that first brinkmanship, and then war
itself, can restore the fortunes of the regime vis-à-vis its society. Napoleon III’s bid
against Prussia and Pakistan’s wars against India in 1965 and 1971 are potent examples
of such “gambles.” These gambles are likely even if a state is much weaker than its
target. Indeed, a regime does not necessarily have to win on the battlefield for returns to
accrue to its identity project. Both Saddam Hussein and Slobodan Milosevic managed to
176 See Toft 2003. Of course, territory is not the only issue that can be constructed as indivisible. Other examples would include religious belief, ethnic affiliation, or status. 177 Swaine 2004: 39-49. 178 Goemans 2000: 19-52; Downs and Rocke 1994: 362-80.
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snatch political victory from military defeat – at least temporarily – by emphasizing their
successful defiance of the United States.
In short, the security dilemma is two-fold in nature: both between states and in the
relations between a regime and its society. Security dilemmas can be provoked and fueled
by a regime’s own particular vulnerabilities, as defined by its legitimating identity and
the state of its consolidation. Rhetoric and identity, rather than anarchy and information
asymmetries, can therefore be viewed as key movers behind the security dilemma.
The impact that domestic counter-mobilization and the security dilemma have on
the rate of adopting revisionist strategies is represented by α in Figure 2.2. In short, the
net effect of these identity-clarifying mechanisms is to heighten the danger of entrapment
even as the exclusivity of the regime’s project remains constant (as represented by the
shift from X to X’).
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Figure 2.2. The Spotlight Mechanism
Yet why would the regime cling so sharply to its project, perhaps risking loss of
office, rather than recast its rhetoric? To be sure, some adjustment on the margins is
possible, indeed probable, at the early stages of the regime’s rule. Some identities, for
example, may “die” or drop out over time if they do not resonate positively among the
populace. As time advances, however, a regime becomes increasingly tied to its project
as the cost of adjustment rises. There are limits to concessions that are difficult for a
regime to transgress if it is to avoid opening key aspects of its legitimating bundle to
(further) challenge.179 Moreover, regimes that predicate their rule on either scapegoating
rhetoric or on opposition to a particularly odious aspect of the international status quo
179 This seems true for all but the most despotic regimes; these actors, however, are resting their rule not on legitimacy but on coercion alone.
x′x
DEGREE OF ENTRAPMENT
LOW HIGH
DEGREE OFEXCLUSIVITY OFIDENTITY
1
0
α
FIGURE 2.2. THE SPOTLIGHT MECHANISM
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will find their ability to “change horses” circumscribed by the weight of past rhetoric and
practices. Substantial returns may still be accruing from a project, making coercive
strategies or marginalization more attractive options than incurring the substantial risks
associated with openly contradicting prior claims.
We should note, however, the existence of countervailing pressures that can
lessen, if not totally ameliorate, the dangers of entrapment. Violence or its threat can be
used by despotic actors to destroy opposition networks, for example, and to enforce a
regularized system of repression that enforces standards of appropriate conduct. Yet the
relationship between violence and the dampening of entrapment pressures is variable.180
It is arguable, for example, that at low or moderate levels of repression the mobilization
of opposition is facilitated, not dampened, since the use of violence acts to delineate
clearly the boundaries of the political community.
Once state-led violence reaches a certain threshold point, however, it is more
probable that mobilization becomes extremely difficult, thus ameliorating the pressures
on the regime. Indeed, unless there is a sudden shift in the political opportunity structure
– perhaps due to the erosion of the coercive apparatus itself – a regime may be able to
suppress open resistance for a considerable period of time. The use of violence
nonetheless leaves an institutional residue that can seriously complicate the regime’s
efforts to entrench its own project. The Soviet Union provides one example where the
violent imposition of a collective identity not only spurred the rise of reactive
nationalisms where none existed before but also led to the actual institutionalization of
these differences. These institutions would in turn foster the emergence of rival identities
over time and provided the resources for successfully challenging the regime’s project.181
180 See Beissinger 2002: 322-330; Thompson 2001: 63-83; Gupta, Singh and Sprague 1993: 301-39. 181 See Martin 2001: 311-41.
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Regimes can therefore fall victim to the unanticipated consequences that arise out
of the rough-and-tumble nature of identity maintenance. Yet we should not cast such
actors as helpless, or even passive, in the face of their dilemma. Regimes, just like their
opponents, are strategic actors, and can use several tactics designed to deflect, co-opt, or
destroy would-be entrappers. One possible ploy, albeit perhaps a temporary one, is to
“export” the problems that arise from inconsistencies within an identity project. A
“schizophrenic” Saudi state, for example, has financed radical Islamic movements in
Afghanistan since 1979 as a way of burnishing its own, partially tarnished, Islamic
credentials. And, equally as important, Afghanistan siphoned off leaders and funds that
could have been used to forge a powerful anti-Saudi opposition.182
Changes on the margins of an identity project are also possible, and embattled
regimes may try to poach from an opponent’s language or to incorporate rival elites into
power. Such changes are, however, increasingly costly as time passes and are inherently
limited if the rival’s claims are sharply antithetical to the core of the regime’s own
project. Another possible tactic for ameliorating potential challenges is to cycle elites;
turnover in key ministries may, for example, enable a regime to pass blame for its past
failures onto to public scapegoats, allowing a “fresh start” to be made. High turnover
rates in Boris Yeltsin’s administrations – particularly at the Prime Ministerial level – can
be seen as an attempt to silence critics by shifting blame away from Yeltsin and toward
others guilty of incorrectly implementing the regime’s project. Finally, violence can be
used to destroy rival claims outright, though reliance on coercion alone is not a
sustainable strategy over the long term.
182 Doran 2004: 35-51; Coll 2004: 65-72, 261, 277, 398.
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V. GRAND STRATEGY UNHINGED
A regime’s identity commitment defines the purpose of grand strategy even as it
works to constrict the range of options available for attaining these objectives. Grand
strategy is defined here as a collection of diplomatic, economic, and military policies that
are adopted for the attainment of a desired political outcome (ultimately, regime
survival).183 In effect, the content of a regime’s identity bundle demarcates the range of
strategies that are deemed appropriate to pursue. The use of scapegoating and exclusivist
language, for example, may remove “offer concessions” or “retreat” from a regime’s
choice set in bargaining with its rival. Indeed, the fear of supplying opponents with new
examples of hypocrisy can force regimes to discard strategies that, on their face, appear
to promise greater gains and lower risks for the regime than the policy it is currently
pursuing. This is particularly likely if a regime has cast an issue as indivisible. Indo-
Pakistani conflicts over the future of Kashmir and the status of Jerusalem offer two potent
examples of cases where choice sets have dramatically narrowed as a consequence of
regime commitments to exclusivist collective identities.
Collective identities therefore have a coercive logic since they can force a regime
left with few politically feasible options to initiate or escalate a crisis to preserve its rule.
In addition, regimes sitting atop identity projects that generate chronic opposition will be
forced to find refuge in external conflicts. Yet the respite these “victories” earn is only
temporary; each crisis resets citizen expectations of the regime in a “what have you do
for me lately?” fashion. As a consequence, the costs of inactivity are raised for a regime
as each crisis demands a greater response than the prior one for the same net effect. A
regime may begin pursuing riskier and more aggressive strategies to secure venues for
demonstrating the regime’s efficacy. Embattled regimes, seeking to pile success on
183 Johnston 1995: 109-17; Kupchan 1994: 67-68; Posen 1984: 13.
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success, are prone to moving rapidly up an escalatory ladder of conflict with strategies
that run counter to the aim of safeguarding the regime.184
As regimes approach the high end of their respective revisionist curves, they are
likely to pursue high-risk, high-gain polices meant to recoup losses, silence critics, and
restore the regime’s standing (see Figure 2.1). Such “gambles for resurrection,” though
inherently risky, appear to promise the embattled regime the opportunity to reconsolidate
its position through a convincing display that demonstrates the appropriateness of the
regime’s project to foreign and domestic audiences. In these cases, time horizons are
often dramatically reduced as the regime becomes increasingly willing to incur short-
term risks to ensure its continued survival.
A focus on the coercive side of identity maintenance also suggests that grand
strategy itself becomes inverted over time, driven less by external threats than by a
regime’s need to reaffirm its legitimacy. Indeed, the demands of sustaining an identity
commitment tend to produce strategies characterized by an ever-increasing imbalance
between means and ends. This is unsurprising: if, as Clausewitz maintains, “war is simply
a continuation of politics, with the addition of other means,”185 then it stands to reason
that grand strategy would become enlisted in a struggle to preserve the basis of a
regime’s rule. This does suggest, however, that existing conceptions of strategies as
largely accurate responses to systemic pressures may be misplaced for at least some
population of states at any one time.
Saddam Hussein’s apparent inability to devise a coherent defensive strategy in the
2003 Iraq War provides a clear example of the distorting effects of identity maintenance.
Though clearly over-matched militarily, Saddam’s forces made rudimentary mistakes that
are attributable to the status of the regime’s project. The army, for example, was
organized for regime security rather than for war-fighting. Indeed, largely a “garrison
184 See Geyer 1986: 527-97 for a similar argument concerning German strategy, 1914-1945. 185 Clausewitz 1984: 605.
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force,” the military’s varied components were best suited for monitoring one another
rather than fighting. Fear of a coup, a consequence of Saddam’s threadbare legitimacy,
meant that the military was prohibited from practicing large-scale maneuvers, conducting
live-fire exercises, and or even entering large cities.186 Even Baghdad was left without an
in-depth defense.
Perhaps most intriguingly, years of militant and aggressive rhetoric may have left
Saddam without the ability to make the concessions over weapons of mass destruction
that might have saved his regime. Had he cooperated with UN weapons inspectors or,
intriguingly, if he had publicly acknowledged that Iraq did not possess WMD
capabilities, he would have faced a severe backlash from a society that he had
impoverished for no reason.187
Identity projects also have important second-order effects on a military’s
effectiveness and, on occasion, even on the tactics that are employed in combat.188 An
emphasis on regime survival, and not state security, may generate preferences for military
offensives that, while perhaps unsuitable, are attractive because they promise quick
victories. Similarly, regimes may end up inadvertently creating “garrison armies” that are
useful for internal duties but are unable to fight modern warfare or to keep pace with
technological developments. Promotion, for example, may take place according to
political loyalty rather than technical proficiency, a policy that will rapidly undermine a
military’s effectiveness.
186 Biddle et al., 2004b: 1-46; Cordesman 2003: 36-52, 477-84; “Regime Thought War Unlikely, Iraqis Tell U.S.,” New York Times, 12 February 2004; “Why Saddam Fought Poorly,” The Washington Post, 11 August 2003 and “A Foe That Collapsed From Within,” The Washington Post, 20 July 2003. See also Biddle and Zirkle 1996: 180-83. 187 See especially Pollack 2004: 79-92. For Saddam’s prior rhetoric, see Bengio 2002. The Bush administration recognized Saddam’s dilemma and sought a UN resolution that would expose his rhetorical contradictions. See Woodward 2004: 222-23. 188 On the distinction between strategic, operational, and tactical levels of effectiveness, see Millett, Murray and Watman 1988: 1-30. Most of these measures deal with the strategic effectiveness.
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Regimes “gambling” on foreign victories to cement domestic legitimacy may also
discover that their armies are beset with low morale and marked reluctance to fight on the
regime’s behalf. In cases as diverse as Napoleon III’s war against Prussia and Milosevic’s
ethnic cleansing in Croatia and Bosnia, soldiers deserted in fairly high numbers because
the regime was perceived as shaky and illegitimate.189
Finally, concern with regime survival may encourage the adoption of
dysfunctional practices. Returning once again to the example of Ba’athist Iraq, we find
that Saddam’s fear of a coup led to the implementation of deliberately suboptimal
policies. Saddam mandated, for example, that the four key control centers of the Iraqi air
defense network be built above ground so that a possible Air Force-led coup could be
quickly crushed by the Republican Guard. Moreover, Saddam ordered that aircraft
shelters be “protected” by the creation of thick walls in front of each shelter. Though
these walls did provide some protection – at least from the front – they also increased the
time that it took for an aircraft to reach the runway. In effect, these walls created
bottlenecks that heightened the aircraft’s vulnerability but, at the same time, bought the
Republican Guards precious minutes to head off any possible coup attempt.190
Note, however, that this argument does not presuppose that the regime’s identity
project is necessarily shared by the military. Indeed, the military may have an
organizational culture that differs sharply from the regime’s own ideational ambitions.191
Moreover, we need not assume that the military will adapt its culture in lockstep with
changes in the regime’s project. Yet the regime’s project sets the framework of the
strategy that the military works to implement. As a consequence, a military may be
tactically proficient – a legacy of its own norms and practices – but still fail to achieve
the political objectives of the regime because the strategy itself is a poor one. The tactical
189 Wawro 2003: 76-78; Gagnon 1996. 190 Biddle and Zirkle 1996: 207fn70. See also Pollack 2003: 182-266. 191 Kier 1997: 27-32 and Legro 1995.
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proficiency of the Nazi Wehrmacht in World War Two, for example, enabled Germany to
score numerous successes on the battlefield that were ultimately undone by the
ineffectiveness of the strategy being pursued.192 It is also unrealistic to assume the
military is an entirely autonomous entity: as the examples of Napoleon III and Saddam
Hussein demonstrate, a regime can forcibly alter, if not destroy, the military’s preexisting
culture and reorient it toward the needs of the regime.
In short, the more fragmented an exclusivist identity project is, the faster a regime
moves up the probability curve of pursuing risky policies of revisionism. These policies
tend to produce sub-optimal results, in part because they heighten the risk to regime’s
survival. Yet the benefits of such policies should not be overlooked. Successes attained in
such ventures, and even losses on the battlefield, can work to ensure regime stability by
consolidating or maintaining collective identity. A string of successes can, in fact, silence
or even convert domestic opposition, or at least promote out-ward conformity with the
regime’s project. If a regime is unable to solve the inherent contradictions in its project,
however, then such successes will prove temporary. A growing imbalance between ends
and means will result as the demands of identity maintenance turn a regime’s strategy
inward. As a result, revisionist regimes have a higher rate of death in warfare than status
quo states not because of material imbalances, but instead because of the dysfunctional
nature of their strategies.193
POSSIBLE OBJECTIONS
Several possible objections may be raised against the proposed argument. Here I
reply to two of the most serious, namely, the problem of preference falsification and the
192 Van Creveld 1982; Dupuy 1977. But see also Brown 1986: 16-20. 193 This high death rate is even more surprising given that (1) revisionists control the timing of their offenses and (2) are presumably directing significant resources and planning toward achieving their objectives.
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question of whether the argument tacitly rests on variation in relative power, and not
identity, to explain state behavior.
First, critics may charge that an emphasis on public rhetoric is misplaced because
it does not accurately tap the “true” intentions of an actor. Indeed, it is the private nature
of an actor’s intentions that is often pointed to as generating the uncertainty that propels
the systemic security dilemma.194 The issue of private information is further compounded
if we consider that state leaders are prone to engage in preference falsification, meaning
that they are unlikely to reveal their genuine preferences to either the international
community or to their own citizens for fear of giving the “game” away.195 As such,
leaders will prefer to employ ‘cheap talk’ and strategies of mimicry as a means of
masking their revisionist ambitions to avoid provoking balancing coalitions and to await
the most propitious time for pursuing such ambitions militarily. Similarly, regimes may
possess mixed motives, a fact that only further increases the difficulties of assessing
intentions accurately.196
While there is little question that elites do in fact possess private information, it
does not necessarily follow that their rhetoric is irrelevant or that their intentions are
infinitely malleable. For example, all leaders must mobilize their publics behind state
goals publicly and will therefore create substantial paper trails that are amenable to
empirical investigation. Indeed, it is important to note that “private” does not equal
“presocial”; even privately held information or preferences are shaped through interaction
with significant Others at the domestic and international levels. Consequently, regimes
are constantly signaling, to use rationalist language, their identities and interests in
relation to Others, whether they be other states, their own society, or their particular
histories. We are therefore more likely to discover evidence of a revisionist turn sooner if
194 See Taliaferro 2000/01: 147-52; Copeland 2000: 199-209; Lake and Powell 1999: 108-11; Fearon 1995. For uncertainty as variable, see Kydd 1997 and Glaser 1995. 195 Kuran 1995: 3-21. 196 Morrow 2000: 74-75.
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we examine rhetoric, rather than actual capabilities, since arms acquisition usually lags
far behind the rhetoric used to justify their purchase.
Finally, “cheap talk” is anything but trivial: even if elites do not believe their
rhetoric, and even if they are strategically manipulating shared norms to mask their real
aims, they still may find themselves entrapped by their own legitimating project.197
Critics may nonetheless counter by arguing that, even if actor intentions are
broadly known, the risk of a sudden “overnight” change in intentions is sufficient to
generate security fears. Two main points need to be emphasized in response. First, the
link between uncertainty over intentions and the danger of suffering a surprise attack is
not well-established. As Richard Betts argues, surprise attacks in the twentieth century
have succeeded despite the fact that the victim had ample warning and solid information
about a rival’s intentions.198 Second, several scholars have taken exception to the
neorealist view of actor motivations as susceptible to sudden rapid change. Jack Snyder
and Thomas Christensen, for example, have each demonstrated that myths-of-rule are
more robust and resistant to change than traditional rationalist and neorealist views of
ideology would concede.199 If such factors are knowable, stable, and consequential for
state behavior, then it makes sense to begin our analysis with actor motivations rather
than deriving intentions from an actor’s systemic position.
In sum, collective identities are more resilient and consistent, even under
conditions of weak institutionalization, than either strategic elite bargaining models or
neorealism suggest. This is not to deny, of course, that adjustments and even drastic
reversals of a regime’s rhetoric are possible. Indeed, change is endogenous to the
proposed argument, as the regime and its opponents constantly struggle to entrench their
own visions of collective identity. Regimes may, for example, “hollow out” their own
197 Farrell and Rabin 1996: 103-18; Johnson 1993: 74-86. 198 Betts 1982: 18. 199 See Snyder 1991: 31-43 and Christensen 1996: 19-20.
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legitimating frameworks through gradual concessions meant to placate rising opposition,
a situation perhaps best represented by the Chinese Communist Party’s slow embrace of
nationalism in the post-1978 era. Change should, however, be more frequent at initial
stages of identity formation than after their institutionalization or the passage of a
significant portion of time. Moreover, regimes recognize that there are significant
penalties associated with adopting positions that contradict prior rhetoric and will
therefore strain to justify the change publicly. Even the signing of the Nazi-Soviet Non-
Aggression Pact in 1939 – perhaps the most glaring example of ideological reversal –
was preceded and followed by sustained efforts in both states to rationalize the decision
in the face of widespread societal disapproval.200
The durability of a regime’s commitment is best reflected, however, in its
willingness to incur substantial costs and risks to avoid recasting its ideational basis of
rule. South Africa’s decades-long struggle to maintain control over South West Africa
(Namibia) offers a clear case in point. South Africa’s regime, having staked its legitimacy
on an exclusivist vision of white minority rule, viewed South West Africa as an
invaluable buffer against African encroachment. Unwilling to cede control of its nominal
colony, as mandated by the United Nations in 1949, South Africa instead declared its
intention to annex it. The consequences would be severe.
Between 1949 and 1990, when South West Africa was granted independence, a
diplomatically isolated South Africa increasingly turned to a high-risk “total strategy”
that intertwined possession of its colony with continued white rule at home. This strategy
would eventually embroil South Africa in a low-intensity guerrilla war (1966-89) in SW
Africa, several armed conflicts with neighboring states, and in a long-running war with
Angola and its Cuban ally. Moreover, United Nations sanctions on South Africa forced it
200 On public opinion in Nazi Germany, see Deist 1994: 371-85; Wette 1990: 114-24; Messerschmidt 1990: 581-86. On public opinion in the Soviet Union, see Brandenburger 2002: Chaps 5-6; Fitzpatrick 1999; Davies 1997.
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to develop a costly indigenous arms industry – one that ultimately produced six nuclear
weapons – while sharply militarizing society.
Yet each military setback was met not with a recasting of ambitions but rather
with the shrill reaffirmation of the appropriateness and necessity of the total strategy.
Having staked its claims to rule on narrow and exclusive criteria, the regime was
compelled to rely on censorship and domestic repression of not just black citizens but
also white dissenters. Self-encircled at home and abroad, the regime finally abandoned its
efforts and granted Namibia independence in 1990.201 The regime and its apartheid
system, fatally weakened by the very strategy designed to safeguard it, would collapse in
April 1994.
A second possible criticism of the proposed argument is that it unduly minimizes
the role of military and economic capabilities in determining state behavior. Indeed, the
argument suggests that capabilities follow from motives – not structural position – and
that states require only some minimal capacity for action in order to pursue revisionism.
Critics may contend, however, that material factors are nonetheless “smuggled” into this
analysis because while all states may harbor grievances, it is only the relatively powerful
that can actually pursue their preferences. The identity of an actor is therefore irrelevant
in this formulation; what really matters is the actor’s relative capacity, a stance that has
been used to justify a narrow focus on (European) Great Powers in security studies. A
parallel can be seen in the study of revolutions and rebellions, where large-scale
collective action remains a rare event despite the existence of widespread grievances
among a population.202
This criticism can be addressed quite simply, however, by again emphasizing that
historically not all powerful states have become revisionist while many materially weak
201 On South African strategy, see Crawford 2002: 329-40, 363-85; Crawford and Klotz 1999; Metz 1987:437-69. 202 See Fearon and Laitin 2003: 78-82 and Lichbach 1995: 282-89
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states have been treated as serious challenges to a global or regional status quo. Pakistan,
despite possessing only one-tenth of the military capacity of rival India, nonetheless
participated in 41 militarized interstate disputes (1947-71) aimed primarily at
restructuring the post-independence status quo surrounding Kashmir.203 More generally,
the use of material indices such as arms buildups as measures for revisionist intent also
court tautology, insofar as revisionist states are defined in terms of their capabilities and
these same capabilities are in turn offered as evidence for revisionist ambitions. The
convergence of nearly all revisionist states, regardless of material capabilities, on the
same set of high-variance strategies also underscores that a common process is at work
across these cases.
Eritrea provides a powerful example of how the imperatives of identity
maintenance can compel leaders to adopt revisionist strategies even in the face of
seemingly crippling weaknesses. A famine-impoverished country of only 3.5 million,
Eritrea has nonetheless fought wars with Sudan, Yemen, Djibouti, and Ethiopia since
declaring independence from Ethiopia in 1993. President Issaias Afwerki’s regime has
sought to legitimate itself through appeals to chauvinistic nationalism as well as calls for
Eritrea to become East Africa’s Singapore. In turn, this heady mixture of ethnic
superiority and dashed economic hopes has created an incentive to strengthen notions of
collectivity through war with neighboring states. The recent war with Ethiopia – a
country of 60 million that received some 67 per cent of Eritrea’s trade – was launched in
May 1998 by Afwerki largely as a means to consolidate the nascent Eritrean identity.
Remarkable for its brutality, the two-year war claimed over 50,000 military deaths and
witnessed famine and forcible expulsions on a scale surpassing Kosovo.204
203 Correlates of War MID Dataset, v3.01. See Chapter Three. 204 Few studies exist of the 1998-2000 war. See Henze 2001; Pateman 1998; “The Biggest War in the World,” The Independent, 25 June 1999.
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To conclude, while material capabilities play a role in shaping the scale of
conflict, we need to examine an alternative set of processes – namely, the demands of
identity maintenance – to under-stand why disparate states like Nazi Germany and Eritrea
nonetheless display remarkable behavioral similarities.
THE STATUS QUO STATE
The same logic of entrapment onto revisionist pathways does not hold for status
quo actors, however. Status quo states are, by contrast, characterized by inclusive
identities that do not generate the same pressures that render revisionist strategies
politically necessary. We should not take this to mean that status quo states are reluctant
or unable to wield violence to defend their interests. Indeed, while these states are
commonly depicted as passive actors paralyzed by economic or martial decline, they are,
as history demonstrates, quite willing to resort to violence.205 The difference between
status quo and revisionist actors lies partly in the fact that the use of violence by status
quo states is limited by shared rules and norms that define the appropriate aims and scope
of war. Moreover, in regimes where status quo propensities have been deeply
internalized, the prospect of challenging the status quo from which the regime derives
substantial benefits is literally unthinkable. Even regimes only partially socialized into
the status quo recognize that the pursuit of revisionism carries with it costs to the
regime’s own legitimating identity. In essence, revisionist regimes invert this calculation
when they pursue such strategies from the fear of the consequences of not doing so.
Inclusive collective identities help to stem the slide down a revisionist path for
several reasons. First, they are much less likely to generate resistance among a populace
205 For passive status quo actors, see Lemke 2002: 33-39; Schweller 1998: 19-26, 91; Gilpin 1981: 156-85.
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because they are not predicated on the exclusion of a particular segment of the
population. In addition, such identities tend to be more flexible because they can more
easily incorporate the emergence of new groups that were unanticipated by the architects
of the original vision. By comparison, regimes that rely on exclusive identities often
sacrifice flexibility for stability, and therefore foreclose options for dealing with the
previously marginalized or newly emergent actors. As such, there is often much less
pressure in status quo states to deflect internal challengers through foreign adventures.
Conformity with the practices and institutions of the international status quo is
continually reproduced for status quo regimes through interaction with significant Others.
Membership in inter-national organizations, for example, serves to reproduce the
socialization processes that reinforce the appropriateness of shared standards of conduct
and legitimacy. While interaction between status quo actors and deviant states acts to
reinforce and clarify the social distance between them, interaction among status quo
states renews the shared sense of obligation that underpins their commitment to the
maintenance of the status quo itself. This sense of mutual obligation in turns leads status
quo regimes to exercise self-restraint in their practice of warfare toward other community
members.206 As such, status quo states are not simply momentarily deterred or weak
revisionist states, but are instead practicing a self-restraint that makes their involvement
in sustained revisionist campaigns doubtful.
Regimes legitimating themselves at home and abroad with inclusive identities are
therefore poor candidates for the adoption of revisionist strategies. Such regimes are
unwilling to sacrifice the recognition that stems from fulfilling a role in international
affairs that is legitimate and appropriate in the eyes of significant Others. Deeply
socialized regimes will also find resort to war or measures that exceed the boundaries of
acceptable behavior either unthinkable or morally unpalatable. Pursuit of revisionism
206 See Hurd 1999: 397-98; Wendt 1999: 124, 261, 279-81. See also Wendt 2003.
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would also mean disrupting the very rules and norms that are generating returns to the
regime. As Dan Reiter and Allan Stam argue, democracies are less likely than non-
democracies to continue long wars because public consent for the war declines over
time.207 The erosion of consent in effect forces the regime to either contemplate the
adoption of measures that contradict its inclusive identity as a democracy to continue the
war or to accept an indecisive outcome. Regimes typically choose the latter option,
perhaps in recognition that an acceleration of the war effort might actually endanger,
rather than bolster, its domestic standing. On the other hand, a regime resting on
exclusive principles is likely to choose to intensify its efforts, seeking to “gamble for
resurrection” through the expansion of its war effort.
Strategies adopted by regimes with inclusive projects therefore tend to be more
selective and limited than policies pursued by regimes legitimating themselves with
exclusive identities.208 Though the presence of an inclusive collective identity does lower
the probability that a regime will follow a revisionist path, we should not rule out such an
occurrence altogether. Indeed, regimes that rely on inclusive but fragmented identities for
legitimatization purposes are often less deeply socialized since the presence of
contradictions creates opportunities for exploitation by domestic actors dissatisfied with
the current legitimating project or the polices that flow from it.
Involvement in a series of crises, if only short-lived, may also be sufficient to
generate a security dilemma that slowly but steadily drags the regime from its inclusive
framework toward a more exclusivist stance. A hardening of the notions of political
community, the use of harsher rhetoric and binary images, and the narrowing of the range
207 Reiter and Stam 2002: 164-92. 208 Democracies, for example, have enjoyed a remarkable record of military success that may be explained in part by the need to select their targets carefully because of domestic political sensitivities. Reiter and Stam 2002: 193-205. But see Desch 2002: 5-47 as well as Reiter and Stam 2003: 168-79 and Desch 2003: 180-94
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of acceptable discourse may be sufficient to further entrench the security dilemma.209
Enmeshed in an identity spiral, an erstwhile status quo regime might find itself sliding
toward revisionist strategies with each passing interaction with its significant Other. As
its identity project hardens, new options once (self-)denied become available, and so the
regime might push through previously held limits on the use of force. It may challenge
the rules governing the use of violence, for example, or the shared understandings of
when the use of military force is appropriate.
IMPLICATIONS
The argument advanced here has several implications for the study of interstate
conflict and of grand strategy more generally. First, it is apparent from this discussion
that collective identity, far from being epiphenomenal, exercises significant independent
causal weight in shaping the orientation and scope of a regime’s grand strategy. To take
one example, the demands of identity maintenance as well as the content of the regime’s
claim to rule can combine to narrow, sometimes drastically, the range of options
available to a regime in addressing an external threat. In rationalist terms, then, a
regime’s particular choice set is a variable, a fact that complicates current theorizing by
suggesting that actors do not possess the full menu of options commonly ascribed to
them. Indeed, over time a regime’s decision tree may be pared down to a single branch –
and a sickly one at that.
Moreover, if we consider the paths to revisionism as a series of interconnected
bargains, we can see that the content of collective identity can create pressures that render
some issues intractable.
209 A tightly disciplined media strategy, such as that practiced by the current Bush administration, might act like a ‘spotlight’ to narrow the options available to the regime. On this point, see Kumar 2003: 366-393.
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For example, a regime may have no way of reaching an acceptable settlement of
an outstanding issue because its negotiating stance is inflexible and narrowly predicated
on a particular collective vision that would be compromised if a settlement was actually
achieved. Deadlock may occur not just over highly symbolic issues such as territory but
can also extend to seemingly minor issues where a regime fears the cost of striking a deal
is the rise of societal opposition.
This removal of options even as others become compelling and politically
necessary also extends to the level of the battlefield. A forced reliance on ill-advised
offensive strategies or the expansion of war aims because of the need to recoup past
losses and quiet domestic critics may render a regime more, rather than less, vulnerable to
collapse. Napoleon III’s disastrous offensive campaign against Prussia in 1870 and
Pakistan’s pre-emptive strike against India in December 1971 – both of which led to
regime collapse – are only two examples of a wider tendency to “gamble” by regimes
astride exclusive legitimating identities.210
A focus on the path dependence of collective identity also suggests that if we are
to capture the feedback between identity maintenance, the rise of opposition, and the
possibility of entrapment, we need to broaden our conception of time. Neorealist and
rationalist approaches emphasize short time horizons and proximate causes, a theoretical
(and empirical) lens that will lead scholars to over-look long-term processes that might be
producing the outcome in question. Indeed, structural factors such as the balance of
power often recede into the background in these analyses as authors rely on proximate
causes – misperceptions on the eve of war, for example – to explain an outcome. Left
unexplored, however, is the possibility that these “causes” may in fact be symptoms of a
slowly unfolding and dynamic process set in motion by a temporally distant event. In
210 On French strategy, see Price 2001: 418; Audoin-Rouzeau 1989: 82; Howard 1967: 45-48. On Pakistani strategy, see Chakma 2002: 884-87; Schofield 2000: 131-48; Cohen 1984: 139-47.
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other words, we need to rely on “films” rather than “snapshots” if we are to capture
accurately the processes sparking revisionism.211
The treatment of collective identity here as a bundle of identities with varying
salience also opens new avenues of inquiry. Rather than emphasizing a state’s corporate
identity (in the singular), we can examine how contradictions inherent in legitimating
identities can affect behavior. Variation in the exclusivity and fragmentation of collective
identities creates testable hypotheses about the ways in which identity affects the
proclivity of regimes to embark and become entrapped upon revisionist pathways.
Interaction between domestic and international levels – and the fact that identity exists on
both levels simultaneously – is also privileged if we treat the regime as a pivot between
levels. Here the role of exclusive identities in sparking and sustaining security dilemmas
should be emphasized, for it is through such interaction that revisionist identities are
reinforced and their potential impact on the international system magnified.
Similarly, the notion that collective identity can act as a normative focal point for
the mobilization of opposition adds a degree of dynamism that has been missing from
existing path dependent arguments. The recognition that not all collective identities
become so institutionalized as to become habitual or taken-for-granted emphasizes the
political nature of the contestation and the institutionalization of collective identity as the
basis for rule.212 Indeed, process-tracing over the length of the causal chain allows us to
examine both the dynamic interplay between regime and opponents and the possible
paths closed off to the regime because they are politically infeasible. Society, then, plays
a constitutive role in this formulation by acting as an engine of endogenous change.
Constant interaction between the regime and its public can force the regime to adjust at
the margins or it can generate sufficient pressures that compel the regime to “run” to stay
ahead of public expectations arising from the regime’s own public rhetoric. The rise of
211 See Bunce 1999: 143 and Pierson 2003: 198-203. 212 On habit, see Hopf 2002: 10-13, 261fn4 and Berger and Luckmann 1966: 53-67.
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unexpected consequences from this process also underscores that the argument does not
rest on a neo- functionalist foundation, a serious charge against much of constructivist
theorizing to date.213
Skeptics may still question the merits of a focus on collective identity, however,
since it is easy to cast revisionist states as “deviants” that will be punished for their
mistakes by the “selection effect” of the balance of power.214 These states, wracked by
domestic pathologies, are therefore cast as beyond the pale of realist theory even as they
are frequently touted as the embodiment of realist precepts about state behavior. To be
sure, the success rate of revisionist campaigns is low. Yet if such deviance is widespread,
then we may be forced to reexamine our notions of strategic effectiveness and the sources
of the pressures that distort the crafting of objectives. Russell Weighley, for example,
notes that the history of warfare in the twentieth century is one of states pursuing
grandiose visions that ultimately culminated in unworkable strategies and overthrown
regimes.215
Revisionism – perhaps the purest distillation of the tenets of realpolitik – thus
flows from the cultural content and contradictions of a regime’s project. And, in addition,
the ideational contours of a regime’s particular identity bundle are continually reproduced
and reinforced through social mechanisms, including those found inside the “realist”
security dilemma. As a consequence, rather than viewing revisionists as deviations from
some realist baseline of expectations, the argument proposed here actually provides an
ideational account of the baseline itself. In other words, variation in the exclusivity of a
regime’s project is responsible for the adoption of realpolitik rather than the systemic
variables privileged by realism. The existence of robust and generalizable pathways to
revisionist outcomes thus poses a compelling alternative account of behaviors
213 Jackson and Nexon 2001: 10-12; Sterling-Folker 2000: 97-119. 214 Feaver 2000: 165-69. For the classic statement, see Waltz 1979: 76-77, 91-92, 127-28. 215 Weighley 1988: 341-64. See also Betts 2000: 5-50.
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traditionally defined as the mainstay of realist theories in international relations. The
following chapters take up the task of testing the hypotheses outlined here in diverse
contexts.
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3
Running to Stand Still: The Revisionism of France (1848-71)
and Pakistan (1947-71) Compared
If a government is doomed to destruction, it perishes by the very means that it uses to save itself.216
In July 1870, Napoleon III, encamped at the head of the French Army, launched
an ill-fated offensive against superior Prussian forces that would set in motion the
collapse of his regime. A little more than one hundred years later another political leader,
General Yayha, would similarly throw his overmatched Pakistani forces into battle
against a vastly stronger Indian force. Yayha met the same fate as Napoleon III, for his
regime was overthrown and Pakistan itself was partially dismembered. It is readily
apparent that Napoleon III’s France and post-independence Pakistan share few common
traits. Yet what unites these two cases is a similar proclivity for high-risk, high-gain
revisionism that equally brought ruin to each regime and the states they ruled. For
Napoleon III, revisionism took the shape of a sustained drive to destroy the Concert of
Europe and to reorder Europe along national lines. For Pakistan’s various leaderships,
revisionism meant a determined campaign to reorder the postcolonial territorial order in
South Asia by incorporating the Muslim populations of Kashmir and Jammu and by
weakening, if not destroying, a polyglot India.
I argue that this shared reliance on risky strategies to pursue revisionist ambitions
is due to the structural similarities in these regime’s collective identity projects. Napoleon
III, along with his Pakistani counterparts, relied on exclusive but fragmented identity
projects as a way of legitimating their rule. Each regime, for example, resorted to
domestic and external scapegoating as a means of building a sense of collectivity among
216 Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte, 6 July 1843 in Napoleon 1972 [1852]: 201.
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their populations. Over time, however, these projects sparked opposition at home and
abroad, forcing these regimes to rely increasingly on risky strategies for the purposes of
identity consolidation. Indeed, these regimes became entrapped by their own rhetoric as
domestic critics and recurring international crises combined to solidify the regime’s
commitment to its project. Strategies of external revisionism therefore became politically
attractive (and necessary) because they promised the opportunity to score gains that
would silence the regime’s critics. As the demands on these regimes increased, state
security became subordinated to regime survival, and grand strategies were turned inward
as tools for safeguarding the regime. Left with few options, each regime would “die” in
war against a superior foe in a “gamble for resurrection” aimed at restoring the legitimacy
of the regime and the identity project that underpinned it.
This chapter is organized as follows. The first section compares the formation of
Napoleon III’s collective identity project (1848-52) and that of Pakistan’s first leadership
(1947-52). The second section details efforts by Napoleon III and successive leaders in
Pakistan to institutionalize their respective projects in the face of rising domestic
opposition and frequent external crises. The third section focuses on each regime’s efforts
to escape its unexpected entrapment through the use of risky strategies that ultimately
lead to the destruction of both regimes and the partial dismemberment of each state. The
chapter concludes with a discussion of the impact of these revisionist campaigns on the
international system and assesses the explanatory leverage provided by the proposed
explanation.
SELECTION RATIONALE
The use of a method of agreement research design enables us to maximize
variation across a range of independent variables often used in international relations to
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explain state behavior.217 This type of comparison, though employed much less
frequently than the method of difference, enjoys a number of advantages in the context of
small-N research. First, such a design facilitates competitive hypothesis testing by
eliminating explanatory variables that are not shared by these dissimilar states. Second,
the heterogeneity of the cases at once provides a difficult test for the proposed argument
and compelling evidence for the generalizability of its causal mechanisms. Finally, by
casting our net widely, we are able to minimize the problem of omitted variable bias. The
method of agreement is therefore appropriate if one seeks to examine cases for necessary
(though not sufficient) causes of a particular outcome because it eliminates variables not
common to each case or that predict opposing outcomes that are contradicted by
similarities in observed behavior.218
Table 3.1 outlines the disparate nature of these cases. Indeed, these cases vary
across most, if not all, of the variables commonly cited by scholars as causes of
aggressive external behavior. For example, Napoleon III’s France commanded an average
of 12 percent of total system capabilities; by contrast, Pakistan’s share of system
capabilities averaged a meager one percent (see Table 3.2). In addition, Napoleon III’s
France was surrounded for most of its existence by weak neighbors, a situation thought
conducive to opportunistic expansion. Pakistan, on the other hand, was the weak
neighbor, as it was situated between two powerful rivals, India and China.219 Each regime
also pursued different alliance strategies, with France opting not to sign any formal
agreements while Pakistan elected to bind itself tightly to first the United States and then,
with less fervor, to China. Moreover, each state was enmeshed in an international system
marked by differing polarity: Napoleon III’s France was a Great Power in a multipolar
217 For method of agreement, see Mahoney 2003: 341-44. See also Przeworski and Teune 1970: 34-39. For advocacy of this type of comparison, see McAdam, Tarrow, and Tilly 2001: 81-84. 218 This is a probabilistic rather than a deterministic claim. See Mahoney 2003: 344-53. See also Braumoeller and Goertz 2000 and Dion 1998. 219 Van Evera 1999: 117-124.
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system, while Pakistan found itself in a bipolar regional order that was heavily influenced
by the Cold War. Finally, the offense-defense balance favored the defense during the
1940s-70s but was tilted more toward offensive military technologies in the nineteenth
Century.220
220 There is no scholarly consensus on the state of the offense-defense balance in either period. Between 1848 and 1871, the balance is variously defined as “offensive” (Quester 1977: 66-84), “mixed” (Van Evera 1999: 171), and “defensive” (Adams 2002). Most historians, however, characterize the system as offensive-dominant, a practice I follow. See Wawro 2003; Wawro 2000; Howard 1967. Similarly, the 1940s-70s era is characterized as either “defensive” (Van Evera 1999: 171) or “deterrence dominant” (Adams 2002). Most accounts examine the global (Cold War) level, where the labels “defensive” or “deterrence dominant” seem equally appropriate. At the regional level, however, Pakistani doctrines favored offensive tactics, whereas Indian doctrines emphasized deterrence. I therefore code the regional balance as “mixed.” On why the same criteria should not be used to judge balances across the pre- and post-1870 era, see Biddle 2001: 756.
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Table 3.1. The Second Empire and Pakistan Compared Variables France Pakistan
Average Annual Share of System Capabilities
(COW Index)
12.67 percent 1.03 percent
Weak Neighbors Yes No
Alliances No
Yes (several)
Polarity Multi-polar Bi-polar
Offense-Defense Balance
Democratizing? (Polity IV Score, 5 Year
Increments)*
Offensive
No 1848: 6 1853: -8 1858: -8 1863: -6 1868: -6
Defensive
Yes, but halting 1947: -4 1952: 5 1957: 8 1962: 1 1967: 1
Regime Type Autocratic
Stable; weak opposition Variable
11 changes of government
Civil-Military Relations Civilian control Praetorian politics
State Capacity High “Failed State”
Extent of Shock New Regime New State, Regime
Type of Identity Project Exclusive, Fragmented Exclusive, Fragmented
Type of Strategy High-Risk, High-Gain High-Risk, High-Gain
Final Outcome Regime collapse State dismemberment
Regime collapse State dismemberment
* Polity IV reports POLITY2 scores of –1 for France (1871) and 0 for Pakistan (1971). These values are reported as missing in original POLITY scores and no historical justification is provided for their inclusion. The addition of these new scores does not change Pakistan’s coding here, for the country does experience limited democratization over the span of the case (from a –4 to a 0 score). Similarly, the use of –1 as the endpoint for the Napoleonic regime does not change the basic fact that the regime underwent greater movement toward autocracy, not democracy. For comparative reference, a score of –1 is comparable to the score received by the preceding regime of Charles I (1830-47); a –6 score is comparable to France’s democracy score in 1813. Napoleon III’s France, which experienced a –12 point shift in its POLITY score, therefore does not fit within the democratization paradigm advanced by Edward Mansfield and Jack Snyder (2005).
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Table 3.2. French and Pakistani National Capabilities as a Percentage of Systemic Capabilities*
France Pakistan
Year Share of Systemic Capabilities (%)
Year Share of Systemic Capabilities (%)
1848 13.8 1947 1.2 1849 13.4 1948 1.2 1850 12.9 1949 1.2 1851 13 1950 1.1 1852 13 1951 1.1 1853 13.3 1952 1 1854 12.7 1953 1 1855 14.9 1954 1 1856 14.3 1955 0.97 1857 14.3 1956 0.98 1858 13.4 1957 1 1859 14.1 1958 1 1860 12.3 1959 1 1861 11 1960 1 1862 11 1961 1 1863 10.3 1962 1.1 1864 9.8 1963 1.1 1865 11.1 1964 1.1 1866 11 1965 1.1 1867 11.6 1966 1,2 1868 14.5 1967 1.2 1869 11.4 1968 1.2 1870 12.9 1969 1.2 1871 14 1970 1.2
1971 0.9
Average Share of System Capabilities
12% 1%
*Source: COW Dataset, V.3.01.
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Equally sharp divergences are also found in the domestic realm. Democratizing
states, for example, are thought to be more prone to initiate conflicts and wars than are
stable regimes.221 Indeed, Edward Mansfield and Jack Snyder offer Napoleon III’s
France as an ideal case that highlights the assumed linkage between partial political
liberalization and a higher rate of war initiation. Yet it is far from clear that France was,
in fact, experiencing democratization during Napoleon III’s reign. Using Polity IV’s
composite regime score – the same dataset relied upon by Mansfield and Snyder – we see
that France’s democracy score shifts from a 6 (out of 10) in 1848 to a –6 by 1868 (see
Table 3.1). As such, Napoleon III’s France is moving in completely the opposite direction
than that predicted by Mansfield and Snyder, and is more properly classified as an
autocratizing regime. Pakistan, however, does experience some limited democratization.
Drawing again on Polity IV, we find that Pakistan’s composite democracy score moves
from a –4 in 1947 to a 1 in 1967. Napoleon III’s France and post-independence Pakistan
are therefore experiencing very different democratization trajectories.
Similarly, these states were governed by very different regime types with variable
degrees of stability: France, for example, was ruled by one leader from 1848-71, while
Pakistan experienced 11 changes of government (1947-71). Nor can we attribute their
similar pursuit of revisionism to a shared type of civil-military relations. Pakistan’s
military played an obvious role in politics, a sharp contrast from the professionalism that
marked the French military. The ability of each regime to extract societal resources also
varied sharply. Finally, the nature of the “shock” each regime was forced to deal with
upon attaining power was different. While Napoleon III was largely concerned with
nation-building, Pakistan’s leaders had to consider not only nation-building but also state-
building – including drawing the new state’s boundaries.
221 Mansfield and Snyder 2005; 2002.
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What follows below is a process-tracing of the presumed links between a regime’s
identity project and its adoption of a revisionist path. This method helps guard against the
danger of concept stretching by facilitating a focused, structured comparison of key
facets of each case.222 Critically, it is the process of entrapment that is center stage here,
and therefore the chapter seeks illustrate the “arc” of a regime’s strategy rather than a
single instance of revisionism. In other words, we want a “film” of entrapment rather than
a “snapshot” so that we capture the gradual entrapment of a regime over time.223 A focus
on the narrowing of a regime’s choice set over time also aids in the discovery of “off-the-
path” path behavior, where the regime is unable to pursue a different path because prior
rhetoric has removed certain options as politically infeasible.
I. BOUNDED INNOVATION: THE FORMATIVE PERIOD
Louis-Napoleon and the leaders of the Pakistan independence movement, the All-
India Muslim League, were faced with a common problem: how to bind citizen
allegiance to their rule in the midst of societal upheaval and institutional instability. Both
regimes elected to solve this dilemma through the use of exclusive identity projects that
relied heavily on scapegoating against internal and external Others as a way of generating
social cohesion. Crucially, each regime’s project also made use of ambiguous symbols
that, though appealing to a broad audience, were potentially problematic if the targeted
audiences could challenge the regime’s perceived inconsistencies. Political competition
also worked to clarify each project’s content and to intensify these would-be rulers’
commitment to their respective projects. The exclusive content of these identity bundles
was also intensified, perhaps unintentionally, through political competition as these
222 On concept stretching, see Collier and Levitsky 1996 and Sartori 1970. On process-tracing, see George and McKeown 1985. 223 Pierson 2003 and Bunce 1999: 143.
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leaders sough to build a reputation that would rise above the “noise” of competing
political claims to win broader support. Periodic crises with external actors, coupled with
the use of violence to silence domestic opposition, also contributed to the inadvertent
intensification of each project. As a consequence, each regime had managed to erect an
exclusive but potentially fragmented identity project roughly five years after assuming
power. The sections below detail first Louis-Napoleon’s, and then the Muslim League’s,
initial efforts.
France: 1848-1852
The overthrow of Louis-Philippe on 24 February 1848 ushered in an era of
tremendous political change. Universal manhood suffrage was introduced even as
political institutions evolved from a monarchy to a republic to an empire in four short
years. Returning from exile in London, Louis-Napoleon entered a violent and confused
political arena with little more than name recognition. Lacking any organized political
party or support, Louis-Napoleon managed to win early elections to the new Republic’s
Council through a grassroots campaign that found a receptive audience in the peasantry.
He called for a restoration of a glorious France based on the principles of the 1789
Revolution, a choice of dates that emphasized his conservative nature and fear of social
disorder. His election to the Presidency (10 December 1848) was made possible by
financial support of conservatives, who viewed Louis-Napoleon as a malleable puppet
who would act as a bulwark against a potential emergence of a “red peril” in this time of
uncertainty. Moving swiftly, Napoleon constructed an extensive censorship and
surveillance apparatus capable of spreading his message while disrupting, if not
eliminating, the voices of rivals not sold on his vision.224
Given the fluid nature of this political environment, can we claim that the regime
possessed a consistent project, even at this early stage? To be sure, Louis-Napoleon was
224 Cragin 2001; Plessis 1985; Atkins 1984; Agulhon 1983; Forstenzer 1981; Payne 1958.
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strategically adapting his message for different audiences. Yet to suggest, as does some
of the historiography on the topic, that Bonapartism was “all things to all men” is wide of
the mark.225 Louis-Napoleon and his close coterie of advisors, especially his chief
ideologue, Jean Gilbert Persigny, in fact adhered to a particular vision of France.
Moreover, their commitment to this particular vision only deepened as the regime
experienced difficulties both at home and abroad in institutionalizing this collective
identity project as the basis of rule. Indeed, even at this early stage Louis-Napoleon’s
rhetoric remained fairly consistent as he worked to build a reputation amidst the
competition for France’s Presidency (1848-51).
More specifically, the Bonapartist project was largely exclusive in content but
fragmentary in its degree of coherence.226 Much of the content of the project was
explicitly draw from Napoleon I’s rule and made frequent use of external and internal
scapegoats as a means of fusing together the French nation. These themes are remarkably
consistent across Louis-Napoleon’s own pre-power writings, his speeches during 1848-
52, and his use of the symbols and trappings of Napoleon I during his quest for power.
He certainly believed that he held a consistent vision: “An entire system triumphed on 10
December,” he argued in 1849, “for the name of Napoleon is in itself a program. At home
it means order, authority, religion, the welfare of the people; abroad, national dignity.”227
Napoleon’s view of the “new” France borrowed consciously from the ideals of the
1789 revolution and, in particular, from the figure of Napoleon I as a means of anchoring
his regime in a glorious past. Rejecting the socialist overtones and upheaval of the 1793
225 Hazareesingh 1998: 29-35 for excellent summary of the historiographical debate surrounding the meaning of Second Empire Bonapartism and need for analysis; his account argues that there was a coherent and consistent core to the regime’s project. On Bonapartism as a coherent framework, see Campbell 1978: 2-8 and Plessis 1985: 8-11. For Bonapartism as a spectrum, see Rothney 1969 and Isser 1974: 27. 226 That is, while Louis-Napoleon’s rhetoric focused consistently on the same themes, these identity markers did not necessarily generate mutually compatible expectations among their audiences. 227 Louis-Napoleon, Speech to National Assembly, 1849. Reproduced in Jerrold 1888: 109-110.
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revolution, he cast the regime as a bulwark against social disorder even as he championed
the merits of universal manhood suffrage. Indeed, a simple content analysis of twelve
proclamations (1849-52) records no fewer than 114 references to “the people” or “the
nation” as the ultimate arbiter of his legitimacy.228 As such, there was little need for
political parties, which could be abandoned in favor of a plebiscites that connected ruler
and ruled directly. Political spectacles like the fête impériale therefore became the main
venue for linking the glory of the Napoleonic past to the present leadership. The
appropriation of military symbols and flag-standards, along with the creation of a
“Second” Empire itself, all underscore the centrality of Napoleonic heritage to the
regime’s identity architecture.
Napoleon also envisaged a new role for France in European affairs, one equal to
the status and glory of a restored Bonapartist empire. Assuming a role as “civilizing
Power,” France would re-store its lost prestige by becoming the “champion of oppressed
nationalities” in Europe. As a result, the Treaty of Vienna system, established in 1815 to
prevent a French resurgence, was the target of near universal opprobrium and served as a
main plank in Louis-Napoleon’s rhetoric. Indeed, as early as 1843 Napoleon had decried
the “humiliating peace” enforced on France by the Concert and the unwillingness of
Louis-Philippe to challenge it, contending that “our nation, formerly so glorious and so
respected, has become the laughingstock of Europe.”229 Taken to their logical extreme,
the twin goals of restoring the tarnished glory of France and its role as champion of
nationalities represented an overt challenge to the current European order and the Concert
system that enforced it.
228 For pre-power writings, see Napoleon 1972 [1852], two volumes. For speeches, see “Proclamation du Président de la République,” 2 December 1851 in Edleston 1931: 2-5; “Proclamation du Président de la République á l’armée,” 2 December 1851 in Edleston 1931: 5-6; “Discours a l’ouverture de la session du Sénat et du Corps législatif pour l’année 1852,” 29 March 1852 in Edleston 1931: 17-22; and “Discours au Sénat,” 2 December 1852 in Edleston 1931: 35-37. See also Jerrold 1888, Vol. III. For fête impériales, see Truesdell 1997. 229 Napoleon 1972 [1852], Vol. I: 258, 311, 342. See also Jennings 1973.
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Unsurprisingly, the restoration of the Napoleonic empire and Louis-Napoleon’s
assumption of the title Napoleon III met with a harsh reaction from leading Powers.
Alarmed by his claims, the conservative Powers, led by Tsarist Russia and the Habsburg
Monarchy, repeatedly sought assurances that Louis-Napoleon would abide by the terms
of the 1815 settlement.230 Concerns in the aftermath of his 1851 coup were so high, for
example, that plans for a joint military intervention were discussed among the four
leading Powers in the case of possible French aggression. Louis-Napoleon himself
recognized the danger inherent in his strategy, but felt compelled by public opinion to
reconstitute the Empire. As a consequence, the Powers responded harshly to the 1852
plebiscite, and refused to confer legitimacy on either Napoleon, his possible heirs, or the
Second Empire itself. As Charles Hallberg notes, “not only was the title [of Napoleon III]
a violation of the treaties [of 1815] but in the eyes of the conservative rulers it was a
direct challenge to the very principles that they had pledged to defend.”231 The delay in
recognition caused considerable angst in France and served to roil tension in Europe; it
was only in January 1853 that Napoleon grudgingly assented to a Russian compromise
acceptable to all parties, thereby averting a general conflict.
Though often neglected in traditional diplomatic accounts of the Second Empire,
the crisis over recognition presaged many of the difficulties that Napoleon III would face
in trying to reconcile the domestic and international demands of identity maintenance.
The need for recognition, so often viewed as driving constructivist accounts of state
behavior, was balanced here by the knowledge that Napoleon III needed to justify his
stance in the eyes of not just the leading Powers but his own domestic ‘constituents’ –
and that tradeoffs would probably have to be made to maintain this delicate balance (i.e.
to reconcile conflicting demands). Napoleon III himself hinted at the tension between the
230 Hallberg 1955: 26-28, 32. 231 Hallberg 1955: 44.
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shared standard of (international) legitimacy and his own unique domestic standing in a
speech shortly after the recognition crisis had been resolved.
When, in the face of ancient Europe, one is carried, by the force of a new principle, to the level of the old dynasties, it is not by affecting an ancient descent, and endeavoring at any price to enter the family of kings, that one compels recognition. It is by remembering one’s origin, by preserving one’s own character, and assuming frankly towards Europe the position of parvenu [upstart], a glorious title when one rises by the free suffrages of a great people.232
Louis-Napoleon sought to articulate and entrench his collective vision at home
through two principal means. First, he used the resources afforded to him by the office of
the President to stage elaborate displays, ceremonies and parades – collectively known as
the fête impériale – to reach a vast audience. Tours of the countryside, military reviews,
and annual celebrations of key historical events all served as venues for Napoleon to
articulate his agenda and, equally as important, to subvert existing republican institutions
in favor of his own project. Indeed, Republican symbols were gradually minimized, if not
removed entirely, from these proceedings as Napoleon’s own identity bundle took center
stage. These events, deliberately drawing from the traditions of the First Empire, were
heavily covered in the press (though Napoleon was far from controlling it at this point)
and were also attended by substantial crowds, some numbering in the hundreds of
thousands.233 The creation of an informal network of Bonapartist supporters – Société du
Dix Décembre – also worked to bolster the impact of these fetes by recruiting
‘cheerleaders’ for these crowds and by bribing journalists for favorable coverage.
232 Louis Napoleon, “Allocution aux délégués des Corps Législatifs,” 22 January 1853, in Edleston, 40-42; quote on 41. 233 Truesdell 1997.
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Power was also enlisted in the service of pomp, however, as Louis-Napoleon
came to rely on police power and censorship as additional instruments of social control.
Building on early legislation, Louis-Napoleon established a fairly extensive system of
press controls and punitive measures to restrict the press to favored allies. Article 32 of
Louis-Napoleon’s 17 February 1852 established the principal of caution money, whereby
newspaper proprietors were forced to pay monies as insurance against possible
infractions of the censorship code. The effect was to confine newspaper ownership to
conservative (wealthy) owners. Spies and the police were also used to disrupt the
meetings of opposition groups, particularly the fast-emerging Democ-Soc movement,
which rejected the regime’s message in favor a more socialist vision. An extensive three-
tiered surveillance system was created to monitor public opinion in all 88 regions of
France. Finally, both a government press agency, Havas, and an official newspaper, Le
Moniteur, were created to ensure an information monopoly.234
Recent historical research has revealed that this censorship network, while
extensive, was still quite porous at this early stage and would in fact remain so
throughout Napoleon III’s reign.235 The Democ-Soc movement, for example, was able to
mobilize and coordinate widespread protest despite extensive regime efforts to disrupt its
activities. This counter-movement had formed in early 1849 in response to Louis-
Napoleon’s use of Bonapartist legitimating themes. In particular, the movement sought to
contest his interpretation of France’s revolutionary heritage. Rather than viewing 1789 as
the new touchstone of the regime, the Democ-Soc movement preferred instead the more
radically socialist 1793 Revolution as a more appropriate ideational base of rule. On 2
December 1851, in response to Louis-Napoleon’s coup d’etat, the movement launched a
massive counter-protest; nearly 100,000 men participated in anti-regime protest
234 Case 1955: 6-14. 235 For Napoleon III’s rule as proto-Fascist, see Gooch 1963. For more recent accounts, see Cragin 2001; Forstenzer 1981; Margadant 1979.
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throughout France. Louis-Napoleon had the movement crushed through police action,
with nearly one-quarter of all participants being arrested.236
This repression would leave a powerful imprint on Louis-Napoleon’s identity
project. The crushing of the Democ-Soc movement severely truncated the French
political spectrum by branding any dissent as subversive. This act probably pushed
Louis-Napoleon in a more conservative direction than he perhaps intended, and his
reputation as guarantor of social order would make it harder in the future to countenance
the political compromises that may have reintegrated an alienated Left. By the time the
Second Empire was promulgated – 2 December 1852 – the newly christened Napoleon
III was sitting atop an exclusive and fragmented identity project. At its core a pastiche of
Bonapartist themes, the project promised to cement citizen allegiance through the use of
internal and external scapegoats. On the domestic side, the “red peril” and the menace of
possible heirs to the Democ-Soc movement’s socialist mantle united the conservatives
behind Napoleon III. On the international front, the Congress of Vienna and its unfair
treaty system provided a readymade cause for a new regime looking to cement its
legitimacy. The stability of the regime’s rule, however, would hinge on whether it could
manage the competing expectations that were sure to arise from the amalgam of
conservative and revolutionary ideals lashed together in its identity bundle. Pakistan: 1947-1952
The disorder that attended the creation of the Second Empire paled in comparison
with the traumatic upheaval that marked the birth of an independent Pakistan in August
1947. Indeed, while Napoleon III was largely faced with a question of regime legitimacy,
Pakistan’s nascent regime was confronted with obstacles so severe that observers quickly
predicted the demise of the state itself.237 A list of these obstacles illustrates the
236 Berenson 1984; Margadant 1979; Merriman 1978. 237 For a summary of these views, see Jahan 1972: 9-51.
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precarious nature of Pakistan. Receiving less than 18 per cent of undivided India’s
financial assets, Pakistan had no civil service or functioning political center, a weak
industrial base, sharp regional divisions, and a paltry military that was inadequate even
for internal policing duties.238 Adding to these difficulties was the fact that Pakistan was
a divided state territorially, with its two wings separated by almost a thousand miles.
Treated as a “successor state,” Pakistan’s leaders would also be forced to legitimate their
rule not only at home but also in international arenas like the United Nations and the
British Commonwealth. Finally, notions of a “Muslim” collective identity were still
weak, providing a thin ideational base for a regime seeking to anchor its legitimacy.
Yet it would be the nature of the regime’s legitimating identity, and not these
severe material constraints, that informed the purpose of Pakistan’s grand strategy. In
fact, the broad contours of the regime’s collective identity project were sketched during
the political struggle for independence. The creation in 1906 of an All-India Muslim
League meant that Muslim nationalism had an institutional vehicle for expression, though
it would not be until 1940 that calls for secessionism were first heard. Led by Muhammed
Jinnah, the League began its push for a Muslim homeland with its May 1940 Lahore
Declaration, which served as the common platform for the nationalist movement. Though
weakly institutionalized even at the height of its popularity, the League managed to
spread its agenda by means of council meetings and speeches that attracted crowds
upwards of 100,000. Efforts were also made to spread the League’s ideational agenda
through pamphlets distributed by regional offices.
The League was largely successful in positioning itself as the sole authoritative
voice of Muslims in India, and thus spent 1940-47 refining the ideas first outlined in the
Lahore Declaration.
238 For overviews of these problems, see Talbot 1998: 95-139; Jalal 1990: 25-136.
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What vision did the League advance for Pakistan? First, and perhaps most important, it
was believed that the Muslims of India constituted a nation and, as such, deserved their
own state. This tenet became popularized as the “two-nation theory.” It held that India
itself was an artificial construct that needed to be divided along ethno-religious lines
because of the inherent incompatibility of its constituent members. “The Hindu and the
Muslim,” one high-ranking League official noted, “are based on two opposing principles
and therefore need two homelands.”239 Such sentiments, aided by the writings of
nationalist historians, were a staple of League speeches throughout this period.240 Jinnah
himself argued as early as March 1940 that partition had become necessary because of
“ideological reasons.”
The Hindus and Muslims belong to two different religious philosophies, social customs, and literature. They neither intermarry, nor interdine together, and indeed they belong to two different civilizations which are based mainly on conflicting ideas and conceptions…To yoke together two such nations under a single State…must lead to growing discontent and the final destruction of any fabric that may be built up for the government of such a State.241
Yet, quite curiously, statements decrying the dangers of being submerged within a
“Hindu Raj” jostle with claims that India itself was a fragile creation that would
eventually unravel because of its internal contradictions. Proposals for a democratized
India, for example, were rejected out of a fear that a Hindu demographic majority would
mean permanent subservience for India’s Muslims. Indeed, this population imbalance
meant that “Musalmen are tied to the chariot wheel of Hinduism [and] thus the Musalmen 239 Abdul Hamid Khan, Chairman of the Reception Committee, Twenty-Eighth Session of the All-India Muslim League, 12-15 April 1941, in Foundations of Pakistan, Vol.2, 1970: 356. 240 Durrani 1944: 106-18.. Nearly every Session of the AIML made reference to the two-nation theory. For specific examples, see Foundation of Pakistan, Vol.2, 1970: 359-363, 379-83, 398, 401, 464-65. 241 M.A. Jinnah, “Presidential Address,” Twenty-Seventh Session of the AIML, 22-24 March 1940, in ibid., 338.
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will be doomed to subjection.”242 The creation of a Muslim homeland, how-ever, was
often portrayed as unleashing disintegrative processes that would destroy rump India
itself. Often comparing India to the first Yugoslavia, the League viewed India as fragile
not simply because of its multi-ethnic character but also because of its caste system. In
particular, League elites believed that the anti-democratic nature of the caste system
would generate grievances that would ultimately overwhelm the ability of India’s rulers
to craft a unifying collective vision.243
Second, League officials sought to foster a sense of collectivity through the use of
historical and contemporary grievances against both Hindu leaders and the British.
Jinnah’s rhetoric was often punctuated with anti-British and anti-colonial slogans
together with protests against the centuries of “Caste-Hindu Raj domination.”244
Moreover, he sought to mobilize support at home and abroad for a future Muslim
homeland by drawing parallels between the League’s efforts and Palestine’s struggle for
independence. Despite this exclusivist rhetoric, however, it was not until mid-1946 when
League elites perceived that the separation of peoples in India might turn violent. Indeed,
this separation of peoples was actively encouraged by the League precisely because it
was “the only possible and permanent solution for the attainment of communal harmony
in India.”245 Astonishing as it may seem, the League also did not anticipate the need for
population transfers, believing it better that minorities remain in both India and Pakistan
to serve as “ hostages” to enforce good conduct by each state.246
242 M.A. Jinnah, “Presidential Address,” Twenty-Ninth Session of the AIML, 3-6 April 1942, in ibid., 388. 243 See for example, Abdul Hamid Khan, “Welcome Address,” Twenty-Eighth Session of the AIML, 12-15 April 1941, in ibid., 351-56 and “The Delhi Resolution,” April 1946, in ibid., 512-18. 244 Anti-Hindu references are scattered throughout these speeches. For specific examples, see ibid., 435, 455, 467, 558-59. 245 M.A. Jinnah, “Presidential Address,” Twenty-Seventh Session of the AIML, 22-24 March 1940, in ibid., 358. 246 Talbot 2000: 198-99.
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Despite this absence of the expectation of violence, we can nonetheless see that
the League’s identity project was cast in fairly exclusivist terms. Indeed, in retrospect we
can also identify a set of factors that held the potential of intensifying the exclusionary
nature of the project. First, much like Napoleon III, the League’s power base was weakly
institutionalized and relied largely on crowds to provide the “weight” behind political
demands during this formative era. These crowds often possessed their own agenda,
creating competition among regional and local League elites to capture these movements.
As such, the danger of radicalization, and of the League being forced to catch up to its
own supporters, was constant.247 Second, and related, rival Muslim organizations such as
the Muslim nationalists or the Red Shirts were denounced as traitors to Islam and the
Muslim cause in a bid to preserve the League’s grip on the nationalist movement.248
While the League’s emphasis on the existence of a Muslim nation and the
consequent need for a national homeland commanded universal assent, other aspects of
the project remained sharply contested. Crucially, the League never clarified what role
Islam would play in the future state once an independent Pakistan was achieved. Though
Jinnah himself explicitly stated that Pakistan was not to become a “theocratic state,”249
alternative visions were articulated by League elites and religious figures. As such, while
League rhetoric constantly evoked the Islamic character of the future Pakistan, the actual
content of that vision was never specified. This left undefined both the relationship
between the state and religion and the scope of the commitment to Islam itself. Was
Pakistan to be a member of a pan-Islamic community, a religiously defined state, or a
secular state where religion was a private affair? Since all three visions found a place in
early League rhetoric, contradictions were unavoidably introduced into the League’s
project. Such schisms, if institutionalized, would be difficult to reconcile because each
247 Talbot 1993. 248 Sayeed 1968: 196-202. 249 M.A. Jinnah, “Concluding Address,” League Legislators’ Convention, April 1946 in Foundations of Pakistan 1970: 523.
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vision generated expectations about internal and external policies that threatened to pull
the regime in several directions at once.
This ideational ambiguity in turn complicated efforts to define Pakistan’s borders.
Adherents of a Pakistan anchored within a pan-Islamic community viewed religious
affiliation, and not political boundaries, as the defining essence of a future Pakistan. As
such, these actors believed that Pakistan would have a geographically expansive notion of
“interests,” with special emphasis being placed on the Middle East as the center of
gravity for Pakistan’s foreign policy.250 By contrast, those who viewed Islam as a
component of Muslim nationalism instead viewed Pakistan as a champion of the Muslim
cause in Southeast Asia. The plight of Muslims “stranded” outside the borders of an
independent Pakistani state thus held the potential of becoming a rallying point in this
nationalist vision.251 Each of these supranational notions of a future Pakistan closely
resembled the scope and intent of Napoleon III’s own expansive commitment to the
“oppressed” nationalities of Europe. Only the secular vision of Pakistan, which rested on
the ideal of equal rights for all citizens, disavowed such sweeping views of the purpose of
Pakistan’s statehood.252
The content and contradictions of the Pakistani project were reinforced and
intensified by the violence that marked the dissolution of India. Massive population
transfers between August and November 1947, along with pogroms initiated by both
sides, created a communal security dilemma that only confirmed already poisonous
stereotypes. Some seven to ten million Muslim refugees made their way in long convoys
to Pakistan; estimates of Muslims killed during this period range from a low of 200,000
250 For specific examples of pan-Islamic rhetoric, see ibid., 37, 44, 213-14, 594-97. 251 For appeals to Muslim nationalism, see ibid., 169, 214, 309, 335. 252 Some in the Muslim League were considering some type of loose Commonwealth between Pakistan and India as late as May 1946. See Mohammed Yusuf, “Opening Address,” Twenty-Ninth Session of the AIML, 2-6 April 1941, in ibid., 379-81 and “Indian National Congress Note on Muslim League Memorandum,” 12 May 1946, in ibid., 536-38. On Islam as a divisive focal point, see Nizamani 2000: 74 and Jalal 1995b: 220, 281-84.
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to several million. Successive events not only radicalized the new Pakistan regime’s
rhetoric but also entrenched its commitment to maintaining group solidarity along
exclusivist lines.253 Indeed, the massacre of Muslims and Sikhs in Jammu (September
1947), the Indian seizure of Hyrabad (September 1948), and the first Indo-Pakistani war
over Kashmir each represented another step in a deepening security dilemma.254
The danger that India posed to a newly independent Pakistan now became a staple
of the League’s rhetoric. India’s actions, Jinnah proclaimed, were “a challenge to our
very existence.” Appealing to the “Islamic spirit of sacrifice,” Jinnah called for “unity,
faith, and discipline” in the face of Hindu-led pogroms and Indian military actions. “Our
enemies,” he noted in March 1948, “hoped to kill Pakistan at its inception [but] Pakistan
has, on the contrary, arisen triumphant and stronger than ever.” In-group solidarity was
thus bolstered by anti-Hindu and anti-Indian rhetoric and by the regime’s frequent
exhortations to sacrifice for the survival of Pakistan itself.
Similarly, a rising view of Pakistan as the “bulwark of Islam” meant that it would
have to act not only in Kashmir but also toward the Muslim populations that remained in
India. Indeed, while the regime’s military efforts to acquire Muslim-dominated Kashmir
(October 1947-December 1948) foundered after some initial gains, the “loss” of Kashmir
would act as a potent symbol for mobilizing support behind the regime’s efforts to create
a Muslim homeland. The status of Kashmir, and the threat of its possible integration into
India, would also become a key vulnerability for the regime. Kashmir’s status as a unit of
the Indian federation openly contradicted the regime’s claims to be the Muslim homeland
in Southeast Asia. Even at this early stage, then, the issue of Kashmir was fast becoming
253 Marx 2003: 27-28. Ron 2003: 16-17 argues that violence is usually uninhibited along regions defined as “frontiers.” This would be particularly relevant for the creation of newly independent states such as Pakistan and India and would contribute to the hardening of stereotypes through personal experience with violence. 254 I do not include these initial conflicts as evidence for Pakistani “revisionism.”
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an indivisible one, with military solutions being increasingly favored over concessions
and compromise.
India was more than an external threat, however. The danger of subversion by
forces hostile to Pakistan – and presumably allied with India – was also heavily stressed
by the regime. Placing a premium on the solidarity of the new Pakistani nation above all
other themes, the regime viewed any ideational deviance as proof that Indian-sponsored
fifth columnists were loose inside Pakistan. In particular, the regime singled out
“provincialism” as the main source of danger to its vision of a national identity rooted
not in local or ethnic allegiances but in commitment to the Pakistani state.
The large Hindu community in East Pakistan, for example, was purposely
ostracized since an inclusionary policy would “finish the League…I say if the League
exists, Islam exists, Musalmans [sic] exist.”255 In January 1948, Federal Communications
Minister Abdur Rab Nishtar outlined the League’s views of local and regional identities.
Regional patriotism [is] simply repugnant to Islam. Pakistan was established on the basis that Muslims were one nation and the tendency to think in terms of Bengali, Punjabi, and Bihari would undermine the very foundations of Pakistan. These disruptive ideas [are] being spread by enemies of Pakistan who [are] working as fifth columnists amongst the Muslims.256
Such sentiments were repeated throughout Jinnah’s speeches in 1947-48 and,
after his death in 1948, would provide the ideational touchstone for successors. Deviance
from the regime’s vision of Pakistan’s collective identity was therefore ruthlessly
suppressed. In April 1948, for example, a secessionist movement was crushed in Kalat.
Moreover, it was announced on 28 March 1948 that Urdu, then the mother tongue of less
255 Talbot 1998: 92. 256 Talbot 1998: 133-34.
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than one per cent of Pakistan’s population, would become the sole national language.257
All other regional or linguistic claims were dismissed as being illegitimate and
subversive, and thus subject to repression on grounds of national unity. Urdu was chosen
to be the national language on ethno-religious, rather than practical, grounds. Distinct
from Hindi, Urdu was thought to “embody the best that it is in Islamic culture and
Muslim tradition.”258 As such, “there can be only one state language if the component
parts of this State are to march in unison.”259 Student protests in East Pakistan, where
Bengali was the overwhelmingly dominant language, were dismissed as the work of
“fifth columnists, communists and other agents financed by foreign help.”260
Pakistan’s new regime, now headed by Jinnah’s lieutenant Liaquat Ali Khan, also
moved to solidify its identity project through the use of repressive tactics. Much like
Napoleon III, the regime felt compelled to rely on censorship of media and restrictions on
political movements to ensure that the project remained unchallenged. In 1949, the Public
and Representative Office Disqualification Act (PRODA) was passed, enabling the
government to disqualify any person from office who had been found guilty of
expansively-defined “misconduct.” The Security of Pakistan Act, enacted in 1952, aimed
to expand the regime’s ability to control political debate. All political parties, derisively
referred to as “mushroom parties” were first deemed inappropriate and then made
illegal.261
By 1952, the Muslim League had managed to establish a regime that sat atop an
exclusivist yet fragmented collective identity project. On the exclusivist side, many of the
core strands of the regime’s identity bundle – its emphasis on Urdu, its denial of regional
257 In 1951 census recorded the following language distribution: 56% Bengali, 29% Punjabi, 7.3% Urdu. 258 M.A. Jinnah, “The Role of Students in Nation Building,” (24 March 1948), in Jinnah: Speeches and Statements 2000: 158. 259 Ibid. 260 M.A. Jinnah, “National Consolidation,” (21 March 1948), in ibid., 146. 261 M.A. Jinnah, “The Role of Students in Nation Building,” (24 March 1948), in ibid., 159.
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identities, its reliance on a racial two-nation theory, and its concern with internal
subversion – suggested a narrowly restrictive conception of the Pakistani political
community. Yet key symbols and identity markers adopted by the regime gave rise to
multiple interpretations and, as a result, to conflicting behavioral expectations. This was
not only the case with Islam, where a gamut of different views held court, but was also
the case with the issue of Kashmir. Indeed, the majority of refugees (mohajirs) from India
settled in West Pakistan, creating a constituency that favored a hardline against India and
the annexation of Kashmir itself. By contrast, East Pakistan saw little of this refugee
inflow. Moreover, a weak and exposed East Pakistan would bear the brunt of any Indian
retaliation, a fact that lowered enthusiasm for a military solution to the Kashmir problem.
Repeated Indo-Pakistan crises, coupled with Hindu-Muslim violence on both
sides of the new border, also reinforced the regime’s commitment to its project. As a
result of these conflicts, the Indian and Pakistani regimes found that their respective
identity projects had become entangled. For example, the non-inclusion of Muslim
Kashmir threatened the Pakistani regime by challenging its ideological claims as the
Muslim homeland. It was precisely this inclusion of Kashmir, however, that provided
tangible proof of the Indian claim to be a multi-ethnic, secular state.
Similarly, the existence of Muslim populations – “mini-Pakistans”262 – in India
also posed problems for each regime. For Pakistani leaders, the existence of these
populations threatened to open a gap between their Muslim nationalist rhetoric and reality
and, crucially, created an imperative to act if these populations were seen as threatened.
On the Indian side, these populations not only raised concern over the prospects of
subversion by Pakistani “agents” but also provided opportunities for communal violence
that threatened the bases of India’s secular nationalist project. Indian domestic politics
262 Brass 2003: 36, 102-03, 342, 348, 374, 384.
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thus became a key concern for Pakistani leaders, ensuring that the maintenance of their
particular vision was held hostage to events beyond Pakistani borders.
Even at this early stage of identity formation, the regime’s choice set had
narrowed quite precipitously. The ability to accommodate regional grievances or
linguistic claims should they arise had been effectively lost as a result of the regime’s
commitment to a unitary vision of Pakistan. In addition, the prospect of forming a
confederation or economic union with India (advanced as late as March 1948), had also
been dashed, condemning Pakistan to a state-building project with minimal resources.
Kashmir, too, had largely been defined as an indivisible issue by 1952. A commitment to
an exclusive identity at home in turn made risky strategies aiming at the territorial
reorganization of some, if not all, of the post-colonial settlement politically attractive.
Fueled by anti-Hindu and anti-India scapegoating, the regime’s own rhetorical claims
made the regime hypersensitive to perceived
challenges. As such, military options rather than negotiations or concessions would be the
preferred means for ensuring the regime’s survival.
The price of failing to meet popular expectations had already become clear by
1952 as well. An attempted coup by Major General Khan (April 1951) and the
subsequent assassination of Liaquat Ali Khan (16 October 1951) were each sparked by
perceived failures of the regime to achieve its aims in Kashmir. The slow emergence of
opposition, in part fueled by movements using the regime’s own rhetoric, also acted to
reinforce the regime’s commitment to its project. A cycle of civilian and then military
leaders, each more committed to the project than its predecessor, would now ensue in the
post-Liaquat era. It remained to be seen, however, whether the returns accruing to the
regime could outweigh the costs it was now generating.
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II. RUNNING TO STAND STILL: DECREASING RETURNS, RISING OPPOSITION
Though each regime had succeeded in articulating an identity bundle, the more
difficult task of institutionalizing it as the basis of rule remained. Each regime chose to
rely on surveillance organs and censorship – and, on occasion, coercion – to ensure that
their visions went unchallenged. Yet while each identity project did generate returns for
the regime, their exclusive nature meant that opposition was bound to arise from
marginalized actors. Moreover, their reliance on ambiguous symbols also created
opportunities for regime critics to mobilize and to pressure the regime using its own
rhetoric against it. Napoleon III and his Pakistani counterparts were therefore left
struggling to maintain a precarious balance between the returns accruing to the project
and the costs generated by mounting opposition that was exploiting its contradictions.
With their own media strategies acting to “spotlight” their projects, these regimes turned
increasingly to risky foreign policies as a means of consolidating their identity-building
efforts. Grand strategy, then, had started to become an element of ensuring regime
survival rather than state security. Participation in repeated crises would only act to
increase each regime’s self-inflicted entrapment, however, and would only hasten the
unhinging of the ends of grand strategy from its means.
France: 1854-1866
By January 1853, the contours of Napoleon III’s identity project had not only
emerged but had been institutionalized, if only weakly, in a set of formal and informal
practices. Accordingly, the task now facing the regime was managing its formal
institutions as sites for the project’s reproduction while deterring their evolution into
venues for challenging the regime by excluded actors. Such institutions would also give
the regime some flexibility for recasting its rhetoric at the margins – that is, by making
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partial adjustments – while relying on an extensive, if still porous, censorship and
surveillance framework to prevent societal challenges
The regime relied heavily on realpolitik strategies and foreign victories as a
means of fostering a greater sense of collective identity. Between 1852 and 1871, France
was a participant in no less than 21 militarized interstate disputes, including four wars,
while the July Monarchy (1830-48) was involved in only 13 disputes and no wars.263
France’s involvement in the Crimean War largely stemmed from a desire to dismantle the
anti-French Concert system and thus demonstrate the ability of the regime to keep the
commitments outlined in its project. Similarly, Napoleon’s publicly stated commitment to
support the nationalities principle would lead him to bait a wary Austria into a war (1859)
that secured the independence of a unified Italian state.264 The systemic importance of
these wars was matched at the domestic level by the role these victories played in
supporting the regime. Indeed, Napoleon III orchestrated enormous fêtes of these
battlefield victories on 29 December 1855 and 14 August 1859 as evidence of the
resurgent glory of France under his stewardship. Capped by processions of returning
wounded soldiers, these celebrations worked to reinforce emergent notions of collective
identity that united Napoleon III and the populace.
France’s participation in the Crimean War, for example, was driven in part by a
desire to reap the prestige returns that would accrue if the regime could successfully
fulfill one of its publicly stated goals: the destruction of the hated 1815 treaty system.
That Napoleon III was willing to use foreign wars to cement his rule at home is perhaps
less surprising than the extent to which he was willing to persist in such a venture beyond
all reasonable notions of “cost-benefit.” Perhaps the bloodiest war of the nineteenth
century, the Crimean War levied an exacting toll on France, with some 100,000 men
263 COW Dataset, v3.01. 264 On the Crimean War, see: Schroeder 1972; Mosse 1952. On Italy, see Coppa 1992; Blumberg 1990.
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killed and the French treasury exhausted. Moreover, the war and its outcome earned for
France the enmity of Tsarist Russia and the system-wide recognition that France was
once again bent on becoming a revisionist Great Power. The regime, however, was
willing to trade partial diplomatic isolation and temporary material exhaustion for the
prestige gains that resulted from a clear demonstration of its efficacy in fulfilling its
public mandate. As such, the fêtes for returning soldiers were powerful nation-building
tools.
A strong commitment to the principle of nationalities would also lead Napoleon to
support pro-independence movements on the Italian peninsula. A secret agreement
reached at Plombières (July 1858) with Camillo di Cavour, prime minister of Piedmont,
pledged French military support against Austria, provided that Austria itself would bear
the onus for declaring war. A joint campaign, replete with a public relations program to
generate support for war among a largely apathetic French populace, then ensured to
“bait” Austria into attacking first.265 The campaign ultimately proved successful: on 29
April 1859 Austria launched its attack against Piedmont and other resistive regions.
Napoleon countered with a large military intervention (which he himself led) and soon
scored a number of key, if bloody, victories that were then celebrated at home in a round
of Te Deum fêtes.266
Yet though the conclusion of the war in July 1860 would again be greeted with
enormous fêtes, the Italian War actually marks an important turning point in the regime’s
efforts to consolidate its project. For the first time, a serious gap had emerged between
the various elements of the regime’s project. Support for a unified Italy, for example, was
made necessary by the regime’s commitment to the nationalities principle. Yet at the
same time the creation of an Italian state directly challenged the temporal power of the
265 See Napoleon speech, 3 May 1859 quoted in Price 2001: 407 266 Truesdell 1997: 148-55. 17,000 were killed at Solferino alone. For the text of the secret agreement between Napoleon III and Cavour, see Blumberg 1990: 166-69.
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Pope – who, at this point, was still protected by a French garrison – and thus created
latent disapproval of regime policy among French Catholics. Moreover, the hasty
declaration of victory and the quick ceasefire that concluded the war managed to please
neither the Catholics, who felt that Napoleon III had gone too far, nor the liberals, who
believed that Napoleon III had let slip another opportunity for France to lead progressive
forces in Europe’s reorganization.
Indeed, in the aftermath of the Italian campaign deputies of the Corps du
Législatif began attacking the regime’s foreign policy by highlighting its contradictions.
A clear example of the early stirrings of entrapment is provided by liberal Catholic
deputy Plichon shortly after the conclusion of the Italian war. Arguing that Napoleon’s
policies were compromising both the internal and external security of the country, he
emphasized the tensions in the Bonapartist project: “We cannot be revolutionary in Italy
and remain conservative in France and Rome. We cannot arouse the revolutionary spirit
in one place without reviving it in all the others.”267 In a private letter, Ollivier, an
influential republican who supported the intervention, also noted that the war was waged
primarily to consolidate the regime’s legitimacy: “Basically the Emperor is only
concerned to strengthen his dynasty and silence the slowly emerging internal
opposition.”268
Similarly, Adolphe Thiers criticized Napoleon’s Italian campaign, charging that it
only created “a powerful rival [or] perhaps an enemy [while] weakening the power most
useful to the European equilibrium, Austria.”269 A speech by deputy Pelletan in January
1864 neatly captures how opponents of the regime sought out contradictions between its
rhetoric and its policies:
267 Plichon, speech, quoted in Price 2001: 409. 268 Ollivier, speech, quote in Ibid. 269 Thiers, private correspondence, quoted in Senior 1880: 176
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Every day the foreign press asks why our politics is revolutionary in Turin, counter-revolutionary in Rome, reactionary in Mexico, liberal in Poland, pro-slavery in America and mysterious everywhere. Do you want to end this uncertainty? Give us liberty at home!270
The regime attempted to paper over this emerging fissure by demanding territorial
compensation from the new Italian state. The annexation of Nice and Savoy (14 June
1860), ostensibly a sop to French public opinion, nonetheless brought Napoleon into
conflict with the new leaders of the Italian state while also publicly contradicting his
stated commitment to the nationalities principle on which the still-recent war had been
fought in the first place. Needless to say, the war against Austria did little to engender it
to France’s aims, and served to solidify France’s image as a revisionist bent on
dismantling the principles of legitimacy on which the Habsburg Monarchy was itself
founded. Such a stance would have profound consequences when Austria and France
were faced with the rise of Prussia.
Despite the vocal nature of such opposition, however, anti-regime movements still
remained weak and fragmented as late as 1860.271 The regime itself was still popular with
broad segments of the populace, in part due to its military victories and the perceived
restoration of Bonapartist glory. And the regime continued to bolster its administrative
capacities: its bureaucracy, for example, rose from 122,000 to 265,000 over the life of the
regime. A strict, if still porous, censorship system ensured that the regime’s message
consistently and overwhelming dominated the marketplace of ideas. Moreover, a network
of pro-Bonapartist newspapers and journalists were created to ensure that articles printed
for the urban markets were in turn distributed throughout the regions. In fact, many
regions were served only by Napoleonic papers, a fact which helped to drive home the
270 Eugene Pelletan, speech to the Corps du legislatif, January 1864. Quoted in Price 2001: 305. 271 Plessis 1985: 149.
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regime’s message but that also ensured that contradictions and regime failings were
readily identifiable.
Sizable returns were also accruing to the regime’s nation-building efforts. Indeed,
a sense of collective identity had begun to form as a result of Napoleon III’s efforts to
institutionalize French as the state’s lingua franca. Surprisingly, as late as 1863 some 25
per cent of France’s communes did not speak French or had only a partial understanding
of the language.272 Yet through a dramatic expansion of the education program, the
Napoleonic regime managed to shrink substantially the regions where patois held sway.
This shift of the language game from unassimilated bilingualism to a situation more
closely resembling assimilated bilingualism (where the state language is dominant but
people retain some facility in local languages) helped to cement growing notions of a
French nation. Campaigns were launched in primary schools to stamp out regional
dialects, while literacy programs were used to inculcate the populace with the regime’s
message.273 Illiteracy rates among conscripts, for example, dropped sharply from 36 per
cent in 1846 to 18 per cent in 1871 as access to education improved.274
Still, Napoleon III was concerned that his own institutions were becoming echo
chambers for the marginalized opposition. Recognizing the danger inherent in this
criticism, he moved to coopt this opposition by granting a partial relaxation of censorship
(24 November 1860). The nature of these reforms are important, though they appear on
the surface to be fairly modest, if not innocuous. Napoleon III consented to the verbatim
publication of parliamentary debates in the Moniteur and other newspapers, allowed for a
parliamentary reply to be made to his annual speech from the throne, and assigned three
‘ministers’ who would represent government policies in the Council. Armed now with
272 Weber 1976: 67-75. 273 Price 1987: 309, 313, 350. The expansion of the education system under Napoleon III rivaled that of the vaunted Third Republic’s education drive. See Grew and Harrigan 1991: 251. 274 Price 1987: 330. Another possible indicator of a growing sense of French collectivity is the sharp decline in strikes during most the Second Empire compared with other French systems. Strikes were almost entirely absent until 1865. See Tilly 1975: 56-65.
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slightly increased press freedoms, opposition groups could mobilize around newly
created newspapers and journals that carried the government’s official line but also
provided space for its criticism. The rapid creation of 150 new publications in Paris – 120
of them run by various opposition groups275 – meant that scrutiny of the regime was
sharply increased. In effect, the feedback loops between government rhetoric and policies
were becoming more tightly coupled as inconsistencies could now be more easily
identified and exploited by rival factions. Though censorship remained extensive, enough
space had now opened that opposition movements could pressure the regime, even if
these actors were still largely excluded from a meaningful role in formal institutions.
Napoleon III’s decision to retrench, rather than recast, his legitimating project had
serious consequences for the conduct of French strategy. Indeed, his public commitment
to the nationalities principle would lead Napoleon III to eschew an alliance with Austria
and, shockingly from a balance of power perspective, to support the rise of Prussia. This
apparent “failure” to balance against the threat of Prussia has produced several competing
explanations. Thomas Christensen, for example, argues that Napoleon III’s failure to
balance with Austria is explained simply by the fact that he mistakenly believed that (1)
the war would be an attritional one but that (2) Austria would eventually prevail. Given
these premises, there was clearly no need for France to align with Austria, and thus the
puzzle of the “failure” to balance is considered solved.276 By contrast, James Morrow
casts the “buck-passing” between France and Austria as a coordination problem in which
the costs of an alliance sharply outweighed any possible gains. By 1866, Franco-Austrian
relations were complicated by the issue of Venetia, which Austria wished to retain while
France sought to deliver to the new Italian state. Once Austria agreed to surrender
Venetia even if it won the ensuing conflict, Napoleon had little reason to submit to an
275 Zeldin 1958: 95-96 276 Christensen 1997.
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alliance, and chose to remain on the sidelines in the potentially lucrative role of arbiter
between the warring parties.277
Yet to cast France’s strategy as a case of failed balancing assumes that Prussia
was viewed as a threat by the Bonapartist regime. In fact, it was not, but rather was seen
as a particularly promising example of the power of the nationality principle as a new
basis for European order.278 This helps to explain why, instead of balancing, Napoleon
actually encouraged Prussia’s rise and worked to create the Prusso-Italian alliance that
defeated Austria in the 1866 war.
Napoleon’s pro-Prussia stance is remarkably consistent across both private
documents and his public speeches before and after Austria was crushed at Sadowa (3
July 1866).279 As tensions arose between Prussia and Austria, Napoleon routinely
characterized Prussia as “the bearer and representative of German nationality and Liberal
ideas.”280 He also noted to Prussian ambassador Goltz as early as 1865 that “you know I
consider it essential that she [Prussia] should extend herself.”281 The conflict itself was
ascribed to the misfit between German nationality and its current geographical situation
that was a legacy of the treaties of 1815.282 In a remarkable discussion with the Austrian
ambassador (14 April) Napoleon expressed only slight misgivings about the possible
course of the impending war and added: “I tell you frankly that if I were to pronounce
against the idea of universal suffrage and a central parliament [as in Prussia]…I should be
left entirely alone to face a neighboring and powerful nation that bears me a grudge, and I
277 Morrow 1993. 278 British diplomats referred to Prussia as “Napoleon’s Frankenstein.” See Lord Cowley to Lord Clarendon, 3 July 1866. Quoted in Wellesley and Sencourt 1934: 284. 279 Austria would become the Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1867. For the sake of consistency, I will continue to refer to it as “Austria” or the “Austrian empire.” 280 Napoleon to Prince Henry VII, 8 June 1863. Quoted in Wellesley and Sencourt 1934: 218. 281 Napoleon to Count Goltz, 29 August 1865. Quoted in Wellesley and Sencourt 1934: 233. 282 Napoleon to M. Drouyn de Lhuys, Memorandum, 11 June 1866. Quoted in Jerrold 1888: 322-25
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should also have contradicted the principles upon which my power rests [my
emphasis].”283
Even if Napoleon had viewed Prussia as a rising threat, however, he would have
been hard pressed to strike an alliance with Austria. Years of demonizing Austria as a
bastion of conservatism and as a bulwark of the 1815 order meant it was nearly
impossible for France to align itself with the Habsburg Monarchy. A legacy of prior
major and minor conflicts and incompatible legitimating frameworks had removed a key
strategy for both powers and would enable the rise of Prussia un-checked by the
combined might of France and Austria.284 The notion of incompatible legitimating
frameworks also help to explain why Napoleon cajoled Italy into siding with Prussia and,
shockingly from a balance of power perspective, actually contemplated an alliance with
nationalist Prussia against autocratic Austria after Sadowa.285
A belief in Austrian strength, however, was secondary in Napoleon III’s decision
to buck-pass because he never viewed the rise of Prussia as a threat. Indeed, it is
inappropriate to suggest that Napoleon III was guided by balance of power logic. Instead,
he openly welcomed the rise of both Prussia and Italy as embodiments of his commitment
to Europe’s territorial reorganization (see below). And while Napoleon III’s promotion of
an alliance between Prussia and Italy was certainly a realpolitik move against Austria, it
was driven by a different set of calculations than Christensen believes. A united Prussia,
it was thought, would represent a stunning prestige success for the Napoleonic regime
and its commitment to the principle of nationalities, much as its anti-Austrian campaign
in Italy (1859) had been. Prussia’s rise was therefore a success, not a threat, a view that
283 Napoleon to Prince Metternich, 14 April 1866. Quoted in Wellesley and Sencourt 1934: 254. 284 Gramont (French ambassador to Vienna) pleaded as early as 1863 that Austria had closed the distance between the states by adopting liberal reforms – but not close enough for Napoleon. Hallberg 1955: 308-09. 285 Echard 1987: 238-46; Taylor 1955: 103-04.
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helps explain why Napoleon III failed to intervene against Prussia even after the extent of
its victory over Austria had become clear.
Napoleon also refused to intervene militarily on Austria’s behalf even when the
impact of Sadowa on the balance of power became clear.286 Instead, he assumed a
position of neutrality and worked to defend his program from domestic critics who
decried Prussia’s aggrandizement. Indeed, Napoleon’s maneuvering in the wake of
Sadowa is illustrative of how “sticky” past rhetoric and practices can be even in the face
of apparent danger. Engaging in an extensive media campaign, Napoleon repeatedly
defended his conduct to foreign and domestic audiences. In a circular sent to foreign
diplomats and subsequently published on Le Moniteur’s front page, he argued that:
France should not take umbrage at this [Prussia’s victory over Austria]. Proud of her own admirable unity, of her indestructible nationality, she cannot oppose or regret the work of assimilation which has just been accomplished, nor subordinate it to feelings of jealousy the principles of nationality which she represents and professes in regard to other nations. The national sentiment in Germany being satisfied, her cares will be dissipated, and her hostilities will die out. In imitating France, she takes a step which does not remove her from farther out, but brings her nearer to us.287
Neatly reaffirming many of the key themes that had marked the Bonapartist
regime’s rhetoric since its founding, the circular concluded that Prussia was not a threat,
let alone an enemy, “because she is governed by principles that are our own.” Despite his
public confidence, however, Napoleon recognized that opposition to his policies was
beginning to mount, both within his own coterie of officials (most of whom rejected his
stance toward Prussia) and among a populace now clamoring for compensation equal to
286 Pottinger 1966: 201-10. 287 The La Valette circular. Jerrold 1888, Vol.4: 330-333. Le Moniteur, 17 September 1866, cited in Case 1955: 222-24.
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that won by Prussia on the battlefield. By December 1866, Napoleon III had concluded
that “my position is detestable” and decided to embark on a campaign to restore the bases
of his regime in the public eye.288
It would be a fateful decision, for opposition to his policies was mounting not
only within a decidedly anti-Prussian general populace but also within his circle of
advisors. The fallout from the La Valette circular had in particular convinced Napoleon
III of the need to redouble his efforts to reconsolidate his now-ragged legitimacy. Perhaps
most importantly, he now recognized that his room for error had shrunk considerably in
the face of a string of disasters in Italy, Mexico, and at Sadowa.289 The fate of his regime
now hinged on whether he could stem the mobilization of opposition. What Napoleon III
needed now was a means to secure a major prestige gain that could restore confidence in
the appropriateness of his regime and the identity project that underpinned it. Whether the
regime would survive the effort, however, remained to be seen.
Pakistan: 1952-65
The period 1952-65 witnessed the erosion and subsequent collapse of Pakistani
democracy as successive civilian leaderships fell in backroom dealings.290 And while a
military coup, led by Ayub Khan in 1958, did provide some measure of elite continuity, it
did not halt the parade of institutional schemes and constitutions designed to govern
Pakistan more effectively. Much, though not all, of this instability is attributable to
regime efforts to institutionalize its identity project in the face of growing domestic
opposition. Indeed, despite a succession of different leaders, each government remained
committed to the vision of a monolingual and united Pakistan that admitted no room for
288 Lord Cowley to Lord Stanley, 11 December 1866. In Conversations 314-17; quote 317. 289 On the disastrous campaign in Mexico, see Cunningham 2001. 290 The best overview of this era is found in McGrath 1996.
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regional differences. In fact, many of these governments fell precisely because they were
viewed as ineffective in their pursuit of this vision. This era was therefore characterized
by successive leaders seeking to ensure that the “returns” from their project outran the
“costs” of sparking opposition to the collective identity project. Ultimately, efforts to
reconcile the contradictions in this exclusivist project would lead Pakistan into a war
against India for which it was vastly unprepared.
The core of that project centered around several now-familiar themes. Civilian
politicians and their military successor, General Ayub, remained firmly within the
ideational framework erected by Jinnah. Ayub’s monthly “Broadcasts to the Nation” are
particularly revealing. His rhetoric, for example, is suffused with references to
maintaining Pakistan’s unity and the related need to “recreate a wholesome atmosphere in
which Pakistan’s ideology can thrive again.”291 Constant reference was also made to the
“sacred trust” passed down by Jinnah, and many of his sayings were invoked during
Ayub’s speeches.292 The prospect of a long conflict with India was another constant
feature of these speeches, a fact which allowed Ayub to call for sacrifices on the part of
the people in order to defeat a militant and imperialist Hindu Raj. Yet India was also seen
as vulnerable because the “bogey of communal disturbances” threatened to undermine its
ideological foundations as a unified state.293
291 President Ayub, “Martial Law,” (8 October 1958) in Speeches and Statements, Vol.1, 1-6. President Ayub, “National Problems: A Review,” (25 February 1959), in Speeches and Statements, Vol.1, 69. President Ayub, “Challenge to our national unity and solidarity,” (23 March 1959), in Speeches and Statements, Vol.1, 95-99. President Ayub, “Elevate National Character,” (13 August 1961) in Speeches and Statements, Vol.4, 74-75. President Ayub, “My Manifesto,” (23 March 1962) in Speeches and Statements, Vol.4, 187-94, esp.187-88. 292 President Ayub, “Quaid-I-Azam’s Birthday Anniversary,” (25 December 1958) in Speeches and Statements, Vol.1: 23-29; “Quaid-I-Azam – the Architect of Pakistan,” (25 December 1959) in Speeches and Statements, Vol.2, 74-80; “Come up to the ideals of the Quaid-I-Azam,” (11 September 1961) in Speeches and Statements, Vol.4: 105; “Fifth Anniversary of Revolution,” (26 October 1963) in Speeches and Statements, Vol.6: 49. 293 President Ayub, “Pakistan’s Defense Requirements,” (22 June 1959) in Speeches and Statements, Vol.1, 119-20; “Broadcast to the Nation,” (1 March 1964) in Speeches and Statements Vol.6, 143-49.
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Kashmir and Jammu also continued to be a potent rallying cry in Ayub’s
speeches.294 These speeches also constantly refer to the danger of Muslim persecution in
the “mini-Pakistans” created in India after partition. The plight of these Muslim
populations not only provided a potent focal point around which a collective identity
could be created but also represented a key source of the regime’s vulnerability. Indeed,
riots and pogroms against Muslims in India directly impacted regime legitimacy by
calling into question prior claims of being the home of the Muslims and a great power
that was capable of playing an important role in Southeast Asia.295 The frequency of
Hindu-Muslim violence in India’s most populous province, Uttar Pradesh, was enough
alone to ensure that the issue remained a sensitive one for Pakistan’s leadership. An
average of 3181 communal riots per year (1948-60) was reported in Uttar Pradesh alone,
a shocking rate that would nonetheless increase to over 5800 per year between 1961 and
1965.296 Though few of these riots were large in scale, their chronic presence, coupled
with subsequent Muslim refugee flows, acted to entrench the regime’s public
commitment to its project.
So too did the fact that the regime’s project, despite repeated elite turnover, was
generating returns that encouraged these elites to persist in their identity-consolidating
efforts. In West Pakistan, for example, the regime had succeeded in shifting the state
language game from one of parochialism (where local languages predominate) to
unassimilated bilingualism (where the official language has gained at least limited
294 President Ayub, “National Problems: A Review,” (25 February 1959), in Speeches and Statements, Vol.1,69-70; “Selfless Leadership,” (6 March 1959) in Speeches and Statements, Vol.1, 82-88; “Build Pakistan with the Spirit of Dedication: Appeal to the Nation,” (26 October 1962) in Speeches and Statements, Vol.5; “Move to ‘Integrate’ Kashmir with India Illegal,” (5 October 1963) in Speeches and Statements, Vol.5, 36-37; “Broadcast to the Nation,” (1 November 1964) in Speeches and Statements, Vol.7, 70-2. 295 President Ayub, “Message to President Radhakrishnan,” (13 January 1964) in Speeches and Statements, Vol.6, 125-26; “Broadcast to the Nation,” (1 July 1964) in Speeches and Statements, V; but see Wendt 1999, Vol.7, 1-6; “People of All Regions,” (27 April 1965) in Speeches and Statements, Vol.7, 188-97. 296 Data compiled from Brass 1997: 46-49.
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currency at the local level).297 Efforts to institutionalize Urdu in Sindh and the Punjab,
two regions known for their strong adherence to local identities, met with some success.
Less than one percent of Sindh was literate in Urdu in 1947, for example, and yet by
1951 that number had climbed to 12 percent and reached almost 23 percent by 1961.298
Moreover, Urdu had emerged as the most common second language in Pakistan, with a
full 50 per cent of respondents in the 1961 census claiming Urdu as their second
language.299 These increases were particularly pronounced in urban settings, where the
percentage of those claiming at least some facility in Urdu rose from 7.3 percent (1951)
to 24.4 percent (1981).300
The rise of Urdu as Pakistan’s lingua franca owed much to the fact that the
regime artificially supported its dominance through media strategies and restrictive
employment policies. As Figure 3.1 demonstrates, Urdu-language newspapers occupied
66 percent of the market in 1953 at a time when less than 7 percent of the population had
native Urdu language skills. Publications in either Sindhi or Punjabi are, by contrast,
noticeably absent. These efforts were matched with requirements that all civil servants be
proficient in Urdu. University admissions were similarly contingent on proficiency in
Urdu, and regional education systems were retooled to promote Urdu at the expense of
the regional language.301 As a result of these efforts, possible nationalisms in Balochistan
and the Punjab remained weak and disorganized, suggesting that returns in the form of
linguistic “tipping” were accruing to the regime and its project.
297 Silver 1975: 574-97; see also Laitin 2000. 298 Ayres 2003: 54-55; Geijbels and Addleton 1980: 75. 299 Area Handbook for Pakistan 1965: 74. 300 Geijbels and Addleton 1980: 70. 301 Ahmed 1998: 41-88; Rahman 1996a: 59-78 and 1996b: 73-97.
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Source. Central Statistical Office, 25 Years of Pakistan in Statistics, 1947-1972. Karachi, 1975: 286.
Figure 3.1. A Comparison of Newspaper Publications in Pakistan by Language, 1953-
1969.
Indeed, it is no mean feat that West Pakistan itself remained an integrated unit.
Faced with substantial regional differences, efforts by Afghanistan to incite secessionist
movements, and low state capacity, Pakistan’s successive leaders faced serious
constraints in institutionalizing their project. Ironically, even these partial returns in West
Pakistan were jeopardized by the regime’s own efforts to defend its project externally
against India. Resources necessary to construct a functioning education system – literacy
0
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rates remained at 30 percent in 1985, roughly comparable to that of Napoleon III’s
France – were diverted to the maintenance of an enormous military establishment.
Between 1948 and 1965, Pakistan devoted an average of 58 percent of its national budget
to defense, a crippling load that may have stunted further integration but that was made
necessary by the regime’s own rhetoric.302
Yet returns from this exclusivist project were ultimately purchased at the cost of
fostering a nascent Bengali nationalism in East Pakistan. Over time, the project’s impact
became increasingly bifurcated, with East Pakistan pushing itself farther away even as
West Pakistan took steps toward consolidation. Table 3.3, for examples, charts the surge
of Bengali-language publications, which came to assume an ever-greater share of all
publications despite government censorship. The heavy-handed imposition of Urdu as the
state language, along with a campaign designed to suppress Bengali, acted to foster
counter-mobilization around linguistic claims that did not exist prior to the regime’s drive
to entrench Urdu. Early language riots among students in Dhaka (21 February 1952)
provided Bengali activists with their first martyrs.
The regime’s exclusive policies also carried over into another potent socializing
institution, the military. Bengalis were largely excluded from senior positions in the
military hierarchy and were vastly underrepresented in the military as whole. By 1959,
for example, Bengalis only occupied two percent of the military’s command positions.303
Why were Bengalis excluded? It was believed by West Pakistani elites that Bengalis
were effeminate and ineffective soldiers because of their presumed closeness to Hindu
peoples. Moreover, those few Bengali units that did exist were segregated from the rest of
the army and received minimal training.304 As such, the regime’s commitment to an
exclusive vision that denied a place for Bengalis seriously undermined military
302 Rizvi 2000: 63, 106. 303 Rahman 1996a: 121. 304 Cohen 1998: 42fn11-44, fn13.
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effectiveness by excluding a large portion of available manpower as “untrustworthy.”
East Pakistan was therefore left only lightly defended, a military strategy ill-suited to
maintaining a unified Pakistan.
These exclusionary media, employment, and military policies inevitably sparked
anti-regime opposition in East Pakistan. Student-led protests against the regime’s Urdu-
only language policy were frequent throughout the 1950s and often met with a violent
reaction from the military.305 Despite the use of repression and strict censorship, anti-
regime groups also began to organize in opposition to the regime’s use of Islamic rhetoric
and symbols. Indeed, civilian leaders and General Ayub equally worked to ensure that the
content of Pakistan’s “Islamic character” remained sufficiently ambiguous so that
multiple groups could be appeased.
Yet this middle course was proving difficult to maintain even at this early stage.
Religious leaders and radical movements alike began to use the regime’s own rhetoric to
challenge its Islamic credentials. Indeed, one such organization, Jamaat-e-Islami, sought
to shame the regime into action by sparking riots against religious minorities in 1953 as a
way of demonstrating how an exclusive and religiously motivated vision should really be
implemented. These riots, which forced the regime to declare Martial Law, only further
underscored the gap between the regime’s vision and its reception by influential actors in
society.306 Similarly, the regime’s pro-Western foreign policy was generating heated
opposition among groups committed to an “Islamic” orientation that established tighter
ties to the countries of the Middle East. Massive demonstrations after the July 1956 Suez
305 Student-led nationalist uprisings occurred in 1951, 1952, 1954, 1956, 1966, 1970-71. Ayres 2003: 57. 306 The government convened a special inquiry, the Report of The Court of Enquiry constituted under Punjab Act II of 1954 to enquire into the Punjab Disturbances of 1953, to investigate this crisis. It concluded that the regime was vulnerable to future challenges by actors claiming that it was insufficiently Islamic. See Report 1974: 254-57.
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Crisis drove home the point that the regime’s commitment to its project would not go
untested.307
General Ayub’s military-dominated regime met with these emergent challengers
in much the same fashion as Napoleon III. Immediately declaring martial law after his 8
October 1958 coup, he proceeded to implement a series of legislative acts meant to
suppress criticism of the regime. These “black laws” took the form of the Public Offices
Disqualification Order (PODO, not be confused with its predecessor, PRODO) and the
Elective Bodies Disqualification Order (EBDO) in March and August 1959, respectively.
These acts were used to disqualify leading political candidates who might pose an
electoral threat in the sham elections sought by Ayub to legitimate his rule. As in
Napoleon III’s France, extensive restrictions on media were enacted, including the
requirement that media outlets pay substantial “security deposits” that were forfeited if
editorials deviated too far from the official line.308 Legislation was also passed to
accelerate Urdu’s entrenchment as the state language by reducing the teaching of regional
languages (particularly Sindhi) above the level of grade six.309
Substantial state resources were also devoted to the task of managing public
opinion through extensive media control. Building on the dubious record of his
predecessors,310 Ayub worked to erect a complex – and still largely unstudied – network
of censorship. Agencies such as the Audit Bureau of Circulation and the Ministry of
Information and Broadcasting worked to maintain strict control over both the editorial
content and the distribution of newspapers. Even popular Bengali songs were banned.311
An additional slate of laws – the Press and Publications Ordinance – was enacted in 1963.
This act, which contained no less than 74 statutes, imposed harsh penalties for “seditious
307 Talbot 1998: 145. Jalal 1995: 298, 302. 308 See Niazi 1986 and Niazi 1994 for the best treatment of censorship in Pakistan. See also Malik 1997: 133-38. 309 Talbot 1998: 163-64. 310 Between 1947 and 1953, 31 newspapers were banned See Niazi 1986: 62. 311 Ayres 2003: 61.
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writings” (Section 124-A) or publications that promoted “enmity and hatred” (Section
153-A). The notorious Section 505 also made provision for severe penalties for writings
“likely to subvert the loyalty of the armed forces” or the unity of the state itself.312
These measures ultimately only further fueled the political and regional
grievances that the regime’s own project had done so much to foment. To be sure, both
Ayub and his civilian counter-parts made strategic adjustments on the margins of their
shared project. A sustained effort to placate Islamic leaders and their movements was
undertaken, resulting in a greater frequency of references to Islamic values and the
creation of an Advisory Council of Islamic Ideology.313 Similarly, Ayub adopted a quiet
and cautious strategy to diversify his alliance partners as the costs of maintaining a close
relationship with the United States – including being a formal ally in the Southeast Asian
Treaty Organization (SEATO) – began to mount at home.314 The overall contours of the
project, however, changed little from leader to leader. Initial returns and successes,
coupled with the cumulative investment of the regime’s credibility in the project’s
maintenance, combined to create the “lock-in” effect that made change increasingly
difficult over time.
By the early 1960s, then, it had become clear that progress in consolidating the
regime’s project was being outweighed by opposition from excluded or marginalized
312 Niazi 1986: 95-100. This Ordinance also limited papers to the publication of reports from officially permitted sources, raised the security deposit from 10,000 to 30,000, and removed the right of appeal. 313 President Ayub, “Islam-A Dynamic and Progressive Movement,” (3 May 1959) in Speeches and Statements, Vol.1: 110-15; “Islamic brotherhood,” (21 June 1960) in Speeches and Statements, Vol.2, 152; “Unite to Preserve Independence,” (26 August 1964) in Speeches and Statements, Vol.7, 18-21; “Broadcast to the Nation,” (1 September 1964), in Speeches and Statements Vol.7, 22-26; “Bring Life Closer to Islam: Appeal to the Nation,” (15 May 1962) in Speeches and Statements, Vol.4, 234-35. The country itself retained the name the “Islamic Republic of Pakistan,” despite Ayub’s desire to change it. 314 Ayub recognized that the maintenance of Pakistan’s US alliance was eroding regime legitimacy among certain quarters of the population. See President Ayub, “Pakistan’s Foreign Policy,” (25 August 1961), in Speeches and Statements, Vol.4, 87.
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actors. And, to make matters worse, the costs of addressing this latent opposition were
spilling over into the military arena.
The increased involvement of the military in politics and in the repression of
regime critics, especially in East Pakistan, was gradually turning the Pakistani military
into a politicized garrison force. Like Napoleon III, the military became a key pillar of
the regime’s project, with frequent parades and martial displays designed to convey the
image that the regime was successfully fulfilling its mandate.315 Promotion in the military
came to rely solely on political loyalty rather than merit. As in Napoleon III’s France, the
dispersed nature of the Pakistani military also made training for large-scale combined
operations very difficult.316 Over time, this collision of imperatives – defend the regime’s
project and maintain Pakistan’s external security – would unbalance Pakistan’s grand
strategy.
With so many of the project’s core identities generating opposition, the Ayub
regime became increasingly sensitive to perceived challenges that, however minor, might
further erode its standing. This sensitivity was heightened even further by the fact that the
regime’s own censorship apparatus was working to spotlight unintentionally the
contradictions between regime rhetoric and policies. As such, India’s decision in 1962 to
incorporate Kashmir even further into the Indian federation was viewed by Ayub as a
cardinal challenge to the regime’s stability. Kashmir was tied inextricably to the survival
of the regime itself, rendering concessions unthinkable and the prospect of damage to
regime stability more alarming than either the loss of the American alliance or a war with
India itself. Against a backdrop of increasing Hindu-Muslim riots in Uttar Pradesh and
mounting internal opposition, Ayub began to search for ways of reversing India’s policies
toward Kashmir.317
315 Owen 2002: 279 and Faruqui 2003: 44-47. Cohen 1998: 105. 316 Cloughley 2000: 126-28. 317 For evidence of communal riots, see: Brass 1997: 46-49 and Ganguly 1997: 48-49. For evidence of how seriously the regime took these riots, see President Ayub, “TV Interview in
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Turmoil in Kashmir over the loss of a holy relic (26 December 1963) and changes
in its constitutional status (30 March 1965) conspired to keep Kashmir in the spotlight.
India’s decision to proceed with amendments in Kashmir’s status appears to have
convinced the Pakistani regime of the need to act forcefully to stave off the loss of its
own claims to Kashmir. Ayub in particular was set on a more assertive course, believing
that an open Pakistani action would be met with popular approval in Kashmir.318 Against
a backdrop of declining regime fortunes and rapid Indian rearmament, Ayub felt that the
risks of inaction outweighed the costs of military action. Bhutto was convinced of the
same. “We [must] act now,” he argued in a late-1964 letter to Ayub, “or it [will] be too
late.”319
These pressures led Ayub to sanction a small-scale military operation against
India in the disputed Rann of Kutch in April 1965. The ensuing battle was militarily
indecisive but nonetheless convinced Ayub that Pakistani forces could succeed against
the numerically superior Indian military. Though indecisive, the risky nature of this
operation should not be overlooked. Indeed, Pakistan’s leadership was willfully ignoring
both public and private assurances from New Delhi that India would fight if provoked
over Kashmir.320 Ayub himself had recognized the dangers of such a provocative stance
as early as 1961: “For a country that had only one-third of an opposing country’s
strength, to go on with an aggressive policy is to ask for suicide.”321 Yet Indian
deterrence strategies had collapsed in the face of an opponent who felt it imperative to
challenge the Kashmiri status quo despite the dangers involved.
Rawalpindi,” (8 May 1964) in Speeches and Statements, Vol.6, 200-01 and “Broadcast to the Nation,” (25 July 1964) in Speeches and Statements, Vol.7, 2-3. 318 See Ganguly 1997: 52. See also President Ayub, “Broadcast to the Nation,” (1 January 1964) in Speeches and Statements, Vol.6, 118-19. 319 Letter from Z.H. Bhutto to President Ayub. Quoted in Taseer 1980. 320 On Indian strategic thinking toward Kashmir, see especially Ganguly 1990: 78-80. 321 President Ayub, “Essentials of Pakistan’s Foreign Policy,” ( 25 August 1961) in Speeches and Statements, Vol.4, 81-92; quote is found on 85.
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Government censorship also played a key role in narrowing the range of possible
responses to India’s moves in Kashmir. In a content analysis of Pakistan’s leading daily
newspaper, The Pakistan Times, N. Bhaskara Rao finds that its editorials were more
conflictual, more biased, and more prone to view Indian actions as aggressive than were
comparable editorials in The Times of India. Indeed, these editorials had adopted a
strident tone toward India and the Kashmiri issue well before the Rann of Kutch and
would continue until well after the cessation of hostilities.322 These public stances, along
with frequent references to the martial superiority of Muslims, would make it
exceedingly difficult for an already-shaky regime to contemplate backing down on the
issue of Kashmir.
Emboldened by its apparent “success” at the Rann of Kutch, Pakistan’s leadership
elected to raise the stakes over Kashmir once again. In August 1965, Ayub approved
Operation Gibraltor, a plan which called for several thousand Pakistani soldiers to
infiltrate Jammu and Kashmir as a means of fomenting rebellion. The operation was
quickly discovered by Indian forces, however, in part because local inhabitants –
assumed to be eager for Pakistani intervention – turned the “guerrillas” over to Indian
authorities. Now the regime was faced with a clear choice: either cut its losses and
abandon plans for fostering revolt in Kashmir or escalate the conflict. Sensing that the
regime could not retreat without undermining its own legitimacy, Ayub opted for war,
and on 1 September 1965 Pakistan initiated a military offensive against India (Operation
Grandslam).323
On 6 September, Ayub outlined the case for war to the Pakistani public: “The
time has come for us to give them a crushing reply which will put an end to India’s
adventure in imperialism…we will remain in history as the people who delivered the last
322 Rao 1971: 112-39. 323 This was also the opinion of American diplomats in Pakistan at the time. See Kux 2001: 160.
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blow to destroy the enemy.”324 Despite the bombastic rhetoric, however, it is clear that
the regime was taking an extraordinary gamble and that it realized as much. Pakistan was
of course vastly weaker than India and, shockingly, had little in the way of strategy
except for a commitment to the military offensive. Pre-war orders to the military also
make it clear that the regime believed the war would be a long one, particularly since “the
element of escalation is always present in such struggles.”325 The decision for war also
cost Pakistan its alliance with the United States, which slapped an arms embargo on the
warring states on 8 September.326
Though Pakistani forces scored some initial victories, the war quickly bogged
down as India marshaled its superior resources to expand the war beyond the Kashmiri
front. By 11 September, it had become obvious to the Pakistani regime – though not to its
citizens, shielded behind a wall of censorship – that military defeat was now looming.
Yet rather than seeking a ceasefire, the regime opted instead to escalate the war by
launching a doomed counteroffensive south of Lahore.327 Nor was this all: on the night of
19-20 September, Ayub and Bhutto headed a secret mission to Beijing to enlist its aid in
opening another front. It was only when China demurred,328 and Pakistan had suffered
significant losses – including the threat of a possible Indian invasion – that the Ayub
regime finally relented and sought a ceasefire through the United Nations. Even here,
however, Bhutto delivered a fiery oration where he argued that Pakistan, even now,
would continue to fight on despite pressure from Washington, Moscow, London, and
324 President Ayub, “Special broadcast to the nation,” (6 September 1965) in Speeches and Statements, Vol.8, 25. 325 GHQ Letter No.4050/5/MO-1, dated 29 August 1965. Directive from President Ayub Khan to General Mohammed Musa, Commander-in-Chief Pakistani Army. Reprinted in Cloughley 2000: 70-71. See also President Ayub, “Appeal to the nation,” (10 September 1965) ) in Speeches and Statements, Vol.8, 36. 326 US was the major supplier of arms to Pakistan (including spare parts), so this was a major “cost” since Pakistan had little in the way of indigenous production or maintenance facilities. 327 It is estimated that Pakistani forces were outnumbered 5:1 at this point. See Faruqui 2002: 58. 328 Chinese premier Zhou Enlai advised Khan to prepare his people for a “peoples’ war.” Kux 2001: 163.
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Pakistan’s own military.329 It was only at the deadline for accepting the ceasefire that he
relented, dramatically pulling a cable from his pocket to announce Pakistan’s acceptance.
In the end, the search for a decisive victory in Kashmir had led the regime to
ascend an escalatory ladder of conflict quickly. Indeed, the regime shifted in short order
from a clandestine operation to small-scale open warfare to a full-scale offensive to
efforts to broaden the war regionally in the span of less than six months. Conflict over
Kashmir only reinforced the regime’s commitment to its particular vision, a fact at odds
with unitary actor war-as-bargaining models that suggest that new information should
lead states to revise their goals downward if costs exceed gains. In particular, a persistent
commitment to Kashmir, its constant invocation as a symbol of Muslim persecution, and
a belief in the racial-religious superiority of Muslims all conspired to create the pressure
to act. Yet the weight of prior rhetoric and the rise of domestic opposition had begun to
create an imbalance in Pakistani strategy as regime survival became the paramount
concern. Ill-advised actions, including war, against a vastly stronger opponent were
therefore the product of efforts by the regime to silence critics and ameliorate the
contradictions now visible in its identity project.
We should also note that the scale of Pakistani revisionism was not limited simply
to the issue of Kashmir. Despite their differences, Ayub and Bhutto were united in their
belief that India could not survive the loss of Kashmir. Ayub, for example, maintained
that “if war is forced on us, it will have to be one that seeks a decision. We shall go full
out, and smaller though we are than India, we shall hurt India beyond repair.”330
Similarly, Bhutto argued that India was now uniquely vulnerable in the aftermath of the
death of Jawaharlal Nehru. “How long will the memory of dead Nehru inspire his
countrymen,” Bhutto asked, “to keep alive a polyglot India, the vast land of mysterious
329 See “Correspondence with UN Secretary General on Indian Aggression Against Pakistan,” in Speeches and Statements, Vol.8, 40-47. 330 President Ayub. Quoted in Brines 1968: 290.
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contradictions, darned together by the finest threads…Nehru’s magic touch is gone [and]
the key to India’s unity and greatness has not been handed over to any individual. It has
been burnt away with Nehru’s dead body.”331
Yet Pakistan too would remain ideologically incomplete without Jammu and
Kashmir, a fact that underscores how the issue of Kashmir had become indivisible for
each regime. Here we have a clash of opposing legitimating frameworks: a coherent,
monolingual Pakistani vision confronted with a polyglot (and hence weak) India that
would collapse if its “subject” populations were liberated. The loss of Kashmir would
therefore unleash a tide of separatist sentiment that would challenge India’s claims to be a
multiethnic state. In turn, the regime and the state itself would unravel in the ensuing
delegitimatization of the Indian project. Indeed, we can see Pakistani hopes of striking a
decisive blow in its public campaigns to justify the war. The Ayub regime did not simply
evince support for Muslims in India but also for all “oppressed minorities” in India –
particularly the Sikhs.332 Much like Napoleon III’s France, a pan-territorial commitment
created an imperative for interference in the domestic affairs and organization of another
state. This commitment transformed a fairly limited territorial conflict over Kashmir into
a test of wills between two regimes whose legitimating projects had become entangled in
one another.
III. GAMBLING FOR RESURRECTION
The weight of nearly two decades of identity consolidation efforts had left
Napoleon III and the Pakistani regime equally locked into a path of revisionism.
331 Quoted in Ganguly 1990: 89. 332 Rao 1971: 157-59 for editorials of public commitment to Muslims and Sikhs in India. For a postwar statement that Kashmir was central to Pakistani project, and that its successful defense bolstered Pakistani unity, see President Ayub, “Address to National Assembly,” (15 Nov 1965) in Speeches and Statements, Vol.8: 72-81, especially 73, 77-78.
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Successive foreign policy crises, along with sustained domestic opposition, had now
severely reduced the choice set of each leadership. And partial adjustments on the
margins of each identity project had, in fact, worked only to further incite the rise of rival
political forces. Each regime was now particularly sensitive to perceived challenges to its
legitimacy. The loss of French prestige or Kashmir, for example, was now thought to
presage the collapse of the regime itself. Now located on the extreme end of the
revisionist S-curve (see Chapter Two), each regime would elect to “gamble for
resurrection” by adopting high-risk strategies that held the promise of recouping past
losses. Yet by now the strategies these regimes were relying upon had become
ineffectual, even dangerous, for their continued survival. Indeed, military effectiveness
and alliance policies had been sacrificed to the demands of regime survival, and so each
regime would end up declaring wars for which they were totally unprepared. A process
set in motion two decades before had now reached a critical point where conflict was
politically attractive and necessary. The result was a common fate: each regime would
“die” on battlefields while their states experienced partial dismemberment.
The Bonapartist regime faced rising domestic opposition and international
isolation in the post-Sadowa era. Though he had originally welcomed Prussia’s expansion
at Austria’s expense, even Napoleon III was now slowly realizing that Prussia’s
continued rise might threaten his vision of a re-organized Europe. Yet his options for
addressing the challenge posed by Prussia had by this time narrowed precipitously.
Indeed, even before 1866 Napoleon III’s strategy had become enslaved to the demands of
regime survival, not state security. Now, in the face of a pressing security threat, the
weight of past rhetoric and the demands of identity maintenance would conspire to
cripple the regime’s ability to respond. More specifically, the nature of the regime’s
project, and the need to maintain its coherence in the face of mounting opposition, had at
least four negative consequences for French grand strategy: (1) it closed off avenues to
potential alliance partners; (2) it prevented the regime from successfully implementing
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badly-needed military reforms; (3) it sharply reduced military effectiveness; and (4) it
bred reliance on risky realpolitik that only heightened regime vulnerabilities.
Surging anti-Prussian sentiment among the French population, coupled with
persistent fears of an impending war, forced Napoleon III to redouble its efforts to blunt
rising criticism.333 Yet his response – a demand for territorial compensations –
paradoxically worked to reduce even further his already narrow margin for maneuver.
Bismarck’s subsequent refusal to agree to the transfer of Luxembourg generated a storm
of criticism from opposition leaders and the public, both of whom had received
‘authoritative’ regime assurances about the impending territorial gains. Subsequent war
scares between 1867-69 acted to harden each regime’s rhetoric and, as a consequence,
increased the costs of backing down if challenged. These crises therefore worked to push
Franco-Prussian relations closer to a state of Deadlock by publicly reinforcing each
regime’s commitment to its project, thereby reducing the ability (and desire) of each side
to make concessions in subsequent encounters.
Adding to the regime’s difficulties was the fact that its formal institutions,
designed with the purpose of legitimating the Bonapartist heir, had now been thoroughly
co-opted by regime critics. In particular, the Corps du Legislatif had evolved into a
platform from which opponents could publicly challenge the regime’s words and deeds.
The steadily increasing electoral fortunes of non-Bonapartist groups clearly demonstrate
the rise of non-sanctioned opposition: garnering 13 per cent of the vote in 1852, these
pseudo-parties amassed almost 20 per cent in 1863 and nearly 32 per cent in 1869.
Moreover, politicized surveillance agencies had contributed to the corruption of the
information the regime had on the true state of public opinion. As such, the regime had
lost touch with the public and was now playing the dangerous game of trying to
333 Lord Cowley to Lord Stanley, 11 December 1866. In Senior 1880: 314-17; quote 317. Prosecutor General report, Dijon, 10 Jan. 1867, quoted in Price 2001: 305. See Napoleon III, Speech from the Throne, 14 March 1867, quoted in Case 1955: 228-29 and Rouher, Address to the Corps du Legislatif, 16 March 1867 in ibid., 230
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anticipate public moods. Indeed, this problem of creditable information became so
debilitating that Napoleon III actually ordered a relaxation of censorship in May 1868 as
a way of adding a corrective to the biased estimates he received.334
The subsequent explosion of cheap, mass distributed newspapers only made the
regime more sensitive to the possible erosion of its standing, however. “One cannot
doubt,” the procureur-général at Besançon wrote, “that this incessant denigration of our
institutions, this systematic criticism of the government’s every act, will, in the long term,
have a damaging impact.”335 Alarm at the loosening of the regime’s grip over society led
Napoleon III to recast his political institutions. A new “Liberal Empire” was proclaimed
on 2 January 1870 and featured slightly more inclusive criteria for political participation.
Napoleon III still retained his Article 13, however, and worked to retain his influence by
once again whipping up concern over the socialist peril that only he could guard
against.336 The result, a strong executive held in check by a strengthened legislature,
appeared to be a stable equilibrium and, indeed, the regime was heartened by its
ratification through plebiscite in May 1870. It appeared that Napoleon III had managed to
reconsolidate his legitimacy. Such success, however, would prove elusive; the regime, in
a sense, was now running hard just to stand still.337
Aware of France’s precarious military situation, Napoleon fitfully sought an
alliance with Austria and Italy to offset any future Prussian aggrandizement.338 Once
again, however, the prospects of such an alliance were dim given France’s prior rhetoric
and policies toward the Austrian Empire.
It is unclear how Napoleon could have offered Austria a public commitment to
defend it when (1) he had spent much effort and time demonizing Austria while (2)
334 Gould 1995: 121-52; Zeldin 1958: 95-96; Case 1955: 226-28. 335 Quoted in Price 2001: 184. 336 Case 1955: 226-33. Plessis 1985: 164; Price 2001: 183-87. 337 7.3 million votes were recorded approving the new Empire; 1.6 million against, while 1.9 million abstained. 338 Echard 1987: 276-94.
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extolling the virtues of Prussia as the epitome of progress and the nationalities principle.
Napoleon was caught in his own contradictions: to support Austria would mean
alignment with the status quo that he had sworn to overturn while renouncing the
nationalities principle that anchored his legitimacy.
As a consequence, the proposed alliance between France, Austria, and Italy never
advanced beyond halting negotiations and wishful thinking. For his part, Christensen
maintains that a formal alliance was never signed because Austria’s slow mobilization
rates, coupled with France’s confidence in its own military, rendered such a pact moot.
Yet Napoleon III’s own musings on the possibility of an alliance reveal an alternative
explanation.339 It appears that Napoleon III decided not to push for a public commitment
between the three Powers because he feared the negative consequences that such a pact
would have on his own domestic legitimacy. In a private letter to Austria’s Emperor
Joseph, he expressed concern that it “would be impossible to guard against leakage”340 of
the existence of this alliance. Yet it is hard to see what possible deterrent effect such an
secret alliance would have against Prussia. Moreover, it is telling that Napoleon III let the
matter die, even though he knew that his own mobilization schedules were hopelessly
unrealistic and that victories against Prussia would be difficult to obtain without Austrian
assistance.341
Unlike the leaders in Morrow’s account, Napoleon III was unable to make the
adjustments at the margins of his cost-benefit curve that were necessary to striking the
proper balance between arms and allies. Instead of updating his calculations as new
information was provided, Napoleon III instead appears “locked” into a suboptimal
policy, namely, an anti-Austrian stance. Moreover, Morrow’s assumption that all leaders
339 See for example correspondence between Prince Metternich and Baron Beust, 3 July 1868 in Wellesley and Sencourt 1934: 348-50. 340 Napoleon III to Emperor Francis Joseph, 24 September 1869 in Wellesley and Sencourt 1934: 354. 341 Adriance 1987: 57-62; Wawro 2003: 36.
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possess a similar choice set ignores the fact that certain options may not be politically
feasible for a regime to consider. That is, Napoleon III faced more than a problem of
choosing among policy options; instead, he faced a dilemma precisely because his choice
set had been dramatically narrowed by 1866.
Similarly, Napoleon belatedly recognized that the French Army was woefully ill-
prepared to match Prussia.342 Yet he ultimately failed in his bid to reorganize and
modernize it after Sadowa because of the political costs associated with openly
contradicting his prior rhetorical claims. To acknowledge that Prussia’s rise was
threatening, and that the French army was unfit, would have opened his regime to direct
challenge from three quarters. First, such admissions admitted the folly of supporting the
nationalities principle, a premise that was a cornerstone of the regime’s rule. It also
challenged Napoleon’s assertion that France, as the heir to the Bonapartist tradition, was
the pre-eminent power in Europe. Finally, reform would also mean arming the masses,
thereby raising the specter among conservatives of the very “red peril” that Napoleon’s
regime claimed it was the bastion against.
The ensuing struggle to pursue military reform would be marked by the ironic
spectacle of the regime’s media machine working strenuously to reverse decades of
Bonparatist rhetoric while minimizing the appearance of any such reversal. Meanwhile,
opponents of the regime, nearly united in their rejection of any military reform, seized the
regime’s own rhetoric as a weapon to challenge, and ultimately defeat, the regime’s
proposed reforms. Military reform, the opposition argued, was not needed since France
was the Great Power in Europe, the Bonapartist heir, and a victorious combatant in the
Crimean and Italian campaigns.343 Moreover, if Prussia did pose a threat to France, then a
levée en masse in the style of 1792 would be more apt given the Second Empire’s
Napoleonic heritage.
342 Napoleon III, February 1867, quoted in Case 1955: 236. 343 Price 2001: 412-24; Holmes 1984: 208-13; Howard 1967: 16-18, 30-35.
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These strategies in turn placed the regime in an awkward position, for it was now
forced to engage in a campaign of censorship to silence these critics and prevent them
from undermining the regime by using its prior claims against it.344 Government
censorship was circumvented, however, by the opposition’s use of petitions and door-to-
door canvassing to mobilize protest. In the end, an Army Law was passed (14 January
1868) that changed little. Indeed, the government itself took great pleasure in reducing
the annual conscription intake on 30 June 1870, only two short weeks before the outbreak
of the Franco-Prussian war.
The regime’s reliance on the military to score victories and to build national
solidarity also negatively impacted military effectiveness. Colonial wars in Mexico and
Algeria, along with major wars against Russia and Austria, had strained manpower and
treasure alike. Mobilization plans, crucial in an era of first-mover advantage provided by
railways, were oriented around colonial duties rather than European warfare. In one case,
a division stationed in Lille was forced to travel to its depot in Algeria before deploying
for an offensive against Prussia in July 1870.345 The army was also garrisoned throughout
France in a bid to preserve public order, a decision that significantly reduced its ability to
practice the large-scale maneuvers necessary to maintain readiness.346 The combination
of colonial and internal policing would mean that the French army remained largely
ignorant of the changes sweeping the Prussian military in terms of tactics and
mobilization strategies.347
Moreover, Christensen’s claim that France failed to align with Austria in 1870
because of French overconfidence also deserves another look. French military planners
were much less sanguine about their prospects in war with Prussia than Christensen
344 Case 1955: 236-37. 345 Serman 1997: 285. 346 Price 2001: 142; Holmes 1984: 144-51. 347 Wawro 1996: 283; Adriance 1987: 20-22.
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allows.348 In fact, warnings about French deficiencies were so numerous that they
paralyzed the military hierarchy by generating a series of contradictory, sometimes
fanciful, responses that only undermined reform.349 Even General Le Boeuf, whom
Christensen cites as confident in French abilities, believed that France would be hard-
pressed to score any quick victories against Prussia without the assistance of allies.350
Similarly, in an address to his soldiers on the eve of battle, a less-than-confident
Napoleon III noted that “you are about to contend with one of the best armies in
Europe…the war will be a long and a severe one.”351
There was also increased recognition that war with Prussia held little promise of
gain but much danger of loss. Indeed, after the May 1870 plebiscite overwhelmingly
ratified the creation of a Liberal Empire, Napoleon III had little incentive to risk the
stability of his rule.352 Yet this sensible view would be overturned in the immediate
aftermath of Prussia’s announcement of its intention to install Prince Leopold on the
now-vacant Spanish throne (1 July 1870). This action was quickly perceived as an affront
to the regime and France’s prestige. Though Prussia renounced its intentions on 12 July,
subsequent demands by France for concessions and a doctored reply by Bismarck (the
infamous Ems Telegram) pushed the two states closer to war. Interestingly, Bismarck had
accurately gauged Napoleon III’s troubles as early as December 1866:
A King of Prussia can make mistakes, can suffer misfortunes and even humiliation, but the old loyalty remains. The adventurer on the throne [Napoleon III] possess no such heritage of confidence. He must always produce an effect. His safety depends on his personal
348 Christensen 1997: 79-80. See Price 2001: 412-24. 349 Wawro 2003: 43-58; Adriance 198: 29-32; Holmes 1984: 158; Trochu 1870. 350 Holmes 1984: 173-74. 351 Napoleon III, Address to the National Guard, 26 July 1870. In Jerrold 1888: 489-90. He did conclude, however, that France would win in the end since “nothing is too difficult for the soldiers of Africa, of the Crimea, of Italy, and of Mexico.” 352 Ibid., 425-26.
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prestige, and to enhance it sensations must follow each other in rapid succession.353
Diplomatically isolated and militarily unprepared, Napoleon III nonetheless
declared war on Prussia (19 July) in what amounted to a stunning gamble. Seeking a
quick resolution, Napoleon personally took command of the army and launched an ill-
advised offensive against vastly better prepared Prussian forces at Saarbrücken.354
Indeed, the political need to “do something” had created a proclivity for risky offenses
that, when coupled with the chaotic state of French mobilization, “w[as] the last thing
that the French ought to have been contemplating.”355 A string of setbacks in August,
followed by a crushing defeat at Sedan (30 August-2 September), led not only to a rout of
French forces but also to the collapse of the regime, the loss of Alsace and Lorraine, and
descent into the violence of the Paris Commune.
France’s declaration of war and the regime’s subsequent destruction was the
culmination of a process set in motion nearly two decades before. Napoleon III had
entrapped himself in a situation where the most attractive strategy was a high-risk, high-
gain “gamble for resurrection” that held out the promise of silencing critics and possibly
recouping earlier concessions. Rouher, the Senate’s president, noted that “we had to take
up the challenge…we no longer had any choice but between war and dishonour”356 while
Napoleon III argued on 11 July that “we had gone too far to draw back now.”357 Shorn of
either sufficient arms or allies, Napoleon now rejected the only option that may have
ensured regime survival: that is, avoiding war with Prussia. The demands of identity
353 Bismarck concluded that Napoleon III would seek to recover his lost prestige through conflict with Prussia on “some pretext or other. I do not believe he personally wishes war, indeed I think he wants to avoid it, but his insecurity will drive him on.” Quoted in Taylor 1955: 103-04. 354 Wawro 2003: 85-91. 355 Ibid., 85. See Price 2001: 418; Audoin-Rouzeau 1989: 82; Howard 1967: 45-48. 356 Rouher, Address to the Corps du Legislatif, quoted in ibid., 430. 357 Baron Vitzthum to Count Andrassy, 16 January 1873 [11 July 1870] in Wellesley and Sencourt 1934: 365.
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maintenance forced Napoleon III to act because his regime had reached the threshold for
making concessions; further admissions of failure or granting of further powers to the
opposition would directly threaten Napoleon III’s continued rule. With public opinion
deemed pro-war, his hand was forced, and he chose war as the best and last means of
preserving his dynasty.358
Pakistan: 1966-71
The Ayub regime, its legitimacy now shaky in the aftermath of military defeat,
redoubled its commitment to its identity project. Though the regime’s press machine
worked to portray the 1965 war as a “victory” for vastly outnumbered Muslim forces, the
war’s outcome provided regime critics with the material to begin challenging the regime.
Taking a page from the regime’s own script, this nascent opposition began questioning
the regime’s commitment to reuniting the Muslim peoples of Southeast Asia and its
ability to fulfill its prior claims to Kashmir and Jammu. Ayub himself was cast as a traitor
and a sellout to the Pakistani vision when he signed the Tashkent Declaration in January
1966. This Declaration simply returned the Kashmiri dispute to the status quo ante, a
disappointing and potentially dangerous outcome for a regime that had staked its prestige
on achieving a military solution. Indeed, backlash against the regime was especially
severe in West Pakistan, where a strict censorship regime had ensured that the populace
was fed glowing reports on Pakistan’s battlefield progress. The sudden announcement of
a ceasefire had therefore come as a major shock.
Foreign Minister Bhutto’s transformation into a regime critic represented the most
serious challenge to Ayub in the aftermath of the 1965 war. His creation of the Pakistan
People’s Party in November 1967 provided a vehicle, if still an illegal one, for regime
critics to organize under one banner. Rather than articulate a new vision of Pakistan’s
identity, however, Bhutto and his supporters were united in the conviction that Ayub’s
358 Audoin-Rouzeau 1997: 393-411.
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true failing lay in his inability to uphold prior claims rather than in the exclusive nature of
the project and the policies that flowed from it.359 The effect of the PPP is hard to
overstate: although officially banned by Martial Law decree, the movement soon swelled,
as its reaffirmation of key tenets of the Pakistan project was combined with a more
socialist (egalitarian) ethos that found support among West Pakistani masses. In response,
the embattled Ayub regime stepped up its efforts to solidify its ideational bases, sparking
a race to “over-fulfill” the plan that resulted in increasingly strident rhetoric and hardened
policy positions.
Bhutto’s mobilizing efforts proved successful, however, because he skillfully
wielded the regime’s own rhetoric against itself. Contradictions between the regime’s
rhetoric and domestic and foreign policies were ruthlessly exploited for political
advantage. On the home front, Bhutto charged that the regime had trapped itself in a
“demoniacal trend”360 of recurring crises caused by “internal contradictions [that] are
massive and complete.”361 National unity, he argued, had been sacrificed by a regime
pursuing “half-measures” that allowed for the diminution of Urdu as the national
language and the rise of corruption that eroded the state’s Islamic foundations. “The
regime stands completely exposed and isolated,” he concluded, “and is straining the unity
of Pakistan. These basic internal contradictions cannot last.”362
Yet Bhutto directed his most scathing comments at the regime’s foreign policy.
Pakistan’s internal contradictions were thought to be creating a “chaotic” foreign policy.
Much like Napoleon III’s domestic critics, Bhutto claimed that Pakistan was “following a
policy riddled with shocking contradictions” that made it “an international whipping
359 Z.A. Bhutto, “Speech in the National Assembly” (16 March 1966) in Bhutto 1974, Vol.1, 287-311, especially 288, 305 and Z.A. Bhutto, “Why the People’s Party?” (27 October 1968), in Bhutto, 1974 Vol.2, 153-58. 360 Z.A. Bhutto, “Political Situation in Pakistan: A Pamphlet,” (April 1968), in Bhutto, 1974, Vol.2, 89-118, quote on p.89 361 Z.A. Bhutto, “Address to Nawabshah Bar Association,” (21 February 1968), in Bhutto, 1974, Vol.2, 65. 362 Ibid.
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boy.”363 The Treaty of Tashkent was viewed as a “stab in the back” to victorious Pakistan
forces – his own role in its crafting was conveniently forgotten – and he called for a more
assertive “policy of confrontation” with India. He also called for Pakistan to reclaim its
“heroic and honorable role” in South Asia by restoring its control over Jammu and
Kashmir.364 Pakistan, he believed, could not survive without these territories:
If a Muslim majority area can remain a part of India, then the raison d’être of Pakistan collapses…Pakistan must continue unremittingly her struggle for the right of self-determination of this subject people. Pakistan is incomplete without Jammu and Kashmir both territorially and ideologically… It would be fatal if, in sheer exhaustion or out of intimidation, Pakistan were to abandon the struggle, and a bad compromise would be tantamount to abandonment; which might, in turn, lead to the collapse of Pakistan.365
There was, for Bhutto, “no alternative [but] to be prepared for a long struggle”366
with India. Indeed, Vietnam’s wars against France and then the United States were cited
as examples of smaller states successfully challenging much stronger rivals. His vision of
a more assertive role for Pakistan also included greater emphasis on ties with other
“Afro-Asian” nations and, in particular, called for Pakistan’s involvement in the fight
against Israel.367 He also called for Pakistan’s adoption of nuclear weapons, famously
363 Z.A. Bhutto, “Political Situation in Pakistan: A Pamphlet,” (April 1968), in Bhutto, 1974, Vol.2, 89-118, quotes on p.98 and p.107. 364 Z.A. Bhutto, “Address to Young Lawyers’ Circle,” (25 February 1967), in Bhutto 1974, Vol.2, 41. See also Bhutto, “Address to Nawabshah Bar Association,” (21 February 1968), in Bhutto 1974, Vol.2, 67-68 and Bhutto, “Political Situation in Pakistan: A Pamphlet,” (April 1968), in Bhutto1974, Vol.2, 105. 365 Z.A. Bhutto 1969: 180. 366 Z.A. Bhutto, “Address to Young Lawyers’ Circle,” (25 February 1967), in Z.A. Bhutto 1974, Vol.2, 41. 367 Z.A. Bhutto, “Growth of People’s Party: Address at its Frontier Convention,” (3 November 1968) in Bhutto 1974: 180 and Bhutto, “The Struggle Continues: Speech at a Public Meeting,” (5 November 1968) in ibid., 197.
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(and repeatedly) maintaining that “if India developed an atomic bomb, we too will
develop one even if we have to eat grass or leaves or to remain hungry.”368
Forced to match, if not exceed, this rhetoric, the Ayub regime suffered a
corresponding loss of freedom of action toward brewing problems in East Pakistan.
Efforts to further institutionalize the regime’s project in East Pakistan through censorship
and language standardization was leading only to alienation and rising grievances. These
grievances found an institutional home in the Awami League, a quasi-party that had
formed as early as 1950 in response to the regime’s language policies. Led by Sheikh
Mujib Rahman, the Awami League commanded a sizable following and, in March 1966,
moved its opposition into the open by demanding the reorganization of Pakistan along
genuine federal lines. This Six-Point Program took aim squarely at the regime’s pro-
Urdu, pro-unitary state designs and, indeed, demanded substantial autonomy, if not
independence, for East Pakistan.369
Ayub was now caught in a dilemma of his own making: to silence the PPP, he
needed to intensify his own nation-building efforts; to appease the Awami League,
however, required exactly the opposite course. Fearing that the Awami League was bent
on destroying a united Pakistan, Ayub opted to destroy the League by arresting Mujib in
May 1966. Mujibur was forced to stand trial on charges of involvement in a conspiracy
with Indian forces to foster the secession of East Pakistan. Neatly linking the twin threats
of internal subversion and external threat, Ayub aimed to dismantle the Awami League
while seizing the political initiative in his struggles with the PPP.
This show trial proved extremely counterproductive, however, for it provided
Mujibur with a platform from which he gained national exposure, particularly when the
fact of his (and others’) torture at the hands of Pakistani intelligence came to light. Forced
368 Z.A. Bhutto, “Pakistan and Nuclear-Proliferation,” (29 December 1966), in Bhutto 1974, Vol.2, 19-23. 369 Sheikh Mujib Rahman, “Six Point Formula – Our Right to Live,” (23 March 1966) in The Bagla Desh Papers, 23-32.
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to release Mujib in 1968 for lack of evidence, Ayub had unwittingly increased the stature
of his rival while publicizing his campaign for East Pakistani regional autonomy. Public
disturbances, fomented in large measure by the PPP and the Awami League in their
respective wings of Pakistan, broke out in November 1968 and continued until Ayub
resigned on 25 March 1969. Failures in war and in nation-building had conspired to
topple Pakistan’s first military regime.
Ayub was replaced by another General, Yayha Khan, who promptly dismantled
Pakistan’s façade of democratic institutions and pushed for Pakistan’s first national
elections. In a move similar to Napoleon III’s 1870 plebiscite, Yayha sought to solidify
his legitimacy with a bold move under-scoring Pakistan’s support for his agenda. Yet
Yayha was unaware of the true state of public opinion and of the deepening chasm that
was now emerging between the two wings of Pakistan. Moreover, Yayha, like Ayub
before him, was receiving junk quality information from the surveillance organs that
were tasked with monitoring public opinion. Indeed, decades of censorship, repression,
and over-reliance on security agencies for assessing public sentiments left Yayha
dangerously ignorant of the true strength of the Awami League.
Yayha, along with most of West Pakistan’s elite, was therefore stunned when the
Awami League scored a spectacular success in the December 1970 election. A
comparison of the intelligence agencies’ own estimates of the probable electoral returns
of various parties and their actual fortunes reveals just have corrupted the regime’s
information stream had become.
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Table 3.3. A Comparison of Projected and Actual Electoral Returns, December 1970370
Party Projected Return (seats)
Actual Return (seats)
Awami League 80 160 Pakistan People’s Party 25 81 Qayyum Muslim League* 70 9 National Awami Party (Wali) 35 6
* Sponsored by Inter-Services Intelligence.
The stage was now set for political confrontation between Mujib’s Awami
League, whose support was concentrated solely in East Pakistan, and Bhutto’s PPP,
which held seats only in West Pakistan. Moreover, the options for dealing with East
Pakistan’s grievances had narrowed sharply. Indeed, the ideational platforms of the
Awami League, PPP, and the Yayha regime were so strident that a negotiated settlement
would be difficult to attain. The Awami League, for example, had little incentive to make
the concessions necessary for striking a deal with the Yayha regime on the nature of
Pakistan’s federal status. The PPP, based on exclusivist language that relied heavily on
ethnic stereotypes and visions of a unified Pakistan, was also unlikely to allow the regime
to compromise with the Awami League. For its part, the regime’s precarious position –
caught between a rising threat to its rule (Bhutto) and a threat to territorial integrity –
limited its bargaining options.
Though desultory negotiations among the parties were conducted, a massive
strike in East Pakistan on 3 March convinced Yayha of the need to break the impasse. In
a desperate play for time, Yayha ordered the convening of the new National Assembly
postponed until 25 March. During that time, however, Yahya and his military advisors
were finalizing plans to crush protest in East Pakistan. On 25 March, then, the order for
Operation Searchlight was given, and Pakistani forces streamed into East Pakistan intent
on capturing the Awami League’s leaders and enforcing order in the restive region.
Believing that the Awami League was an Indian puppet, and that effeminate Bengalis 370 There were 300 seats in the National Assembly, 138 for West Pakistan. See Talbot 1998: 195-201.
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would not resist, Yayha rolled the dice and sought to relieve the pressures facing his
regime through military means. Instead, he sparked a civil war that escalated into the
third Indo-Pak war.
This crackdown, it was thought, would also serve to purge Pakistan of alien
Hindu elements that were undermining Pakistan’s unity and Muslim character. Senior
military officials, for example, cast this Operation as a “war between the pure and the
impure” because it “had reached the point where Bengali culture was in fact Hindu
culture.” Ethnic cleansing was therefore necessary “even if it means killing off two
million people and ruling the province as a colony for 30 years.”371 Estimates of those
killed during this campaign range from a very conservative official count of 30,000 to
nearly one million. Furthermore, an estimated seven to ten million Bengalis also sought
refuge in India, sparking one of the Cold War’s largest humanitarian crises. Though
reports of rape and murder by soldiers were censored in West Pakistan, Western
journalists managed to record these events until they too were forced to leave.372 The
resultant international outcry only further increased Pakistan’s isolation as condemnation
was poured on the Yayha regime.373
While the military managed to restore order in the urban areas of East Pakistan by
late-May, the countryside remained embroiled in a guerrilla war against Bengali
opposition (the Mukti Bahini). Ironically, the military experienced such difficulties in part
because, in their commitment to the ideals of Pakistan, they had few Bengali-speakers
within their ranks.374 Moreover, India had now become embroiled in the conflict, in part
because of its concern that the refugees now streaming over its borders would further
371 Quotes in Oldenburg 1985: 729-30. 372 Zaheer 1994: 168. 373 US reaction was more muted than that of Europe and the USSR, because Nixon was seeking to preserve his back-channel to China; Kissinger visited China on 9 July 1971 via Islamabad on a PIA airliner. Congress, however, cutoff both economic and military assistance. Even “rogue” states can be useful. 374 Report of the Hamoodur Rehman Commission of Inquiry into the 1971 War, 2000 [1971]: 89; see also 118, 124. Hereafter this report will be identified as “HRC.”
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reinforce “mini-Pakistans” in India. This involvement in turn only reinforced Pakistani
suspicions that India was behind the Awami League. The official White Paper published
by the Yayha regime on the “crisis” in East Pakistan (5 August 1971) concluded that
“India never really accepted the establishment of Pakistan [and] desires the re-unification
of the Bharat, the Hindu motherland. Now, through the subversion of East Pakistan, she
again seeks to undermine Pakistan’s integrity.”375
There is little doubt, however, that the Mukti Bahini was in fact receiving
substantial aid from India. Indeed, the Pakistan Army, mired in a bloody and exhausting
counter-insurgency operation, exercised increasingly shaky control over East Pakistan as
guerrilla raids increased in severity after September’s monsoon rains. In addition, Indian
forces began taking up positions all along the East Pakistan-Indian borders, including on
Pakistani soil, on 21 November. A Pakistani attempt to repulse Indian forces failed, and
India and Pakistan traded artillery duels and aerial battles over the next weeks. At this
point, existing war-as-bargaining models would expect that the Yayha regime negotiate
some solution to this crisis. Faced with a debilitating internal war, an overburdened and
under-equipped army, and an unfavorable 1:8 force ratio with India, the regime should
have been searching for a quick exit to this crisis.
Yet Yayha refused to consider negotiations, let alone a compromise, with the
Awami League. Instead, Ayub, anticipating an Indian invasion of East Pakistan, ordered
a preemptive air strike against Indian airfields that achieved little. The third Indo-Pak war
was underway. This risky decision is understandable, however, if we consider how
dangerously the regime’s choice set had narrowed over time. Quite clearly, the regime
was not selecting from a full menu of options, for its prior rhetoric and actions had
removed its ability to make concessions or to compromise in dealing with its domestic
troubles. As such, the regime had now entrapped itself in a situation where the risks of
375 White Paper on the Crisis in East Pakistan (5 August 1971): 46. See also NSC Paper “Threats to Pakistan” (19 May 1971), quoted in HRC 2000 [1971]: 177.
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compromise with its restive Bengali population were viewed as higher than the dangers
associated with striking at India. Yayha’s regime had, in other words, reached the
extreme edge of its revisionist S-curve (Chapter 2) and was willing to gamble for
resurrection by using the possible benefits of a war with India as a way of salvaging its
internal legitimacy. A victory, or even a stalemate, in battle with India held the promise
of silencing domestic critics, severing the presumed link between Bengali nationalism
and its Hindu sponsor, and striking at a hated enemy in one stroke.
Indeed, there was near consensus within the Ayub regime by late November that
war had to be initiated because the costs of inaction were so high. Months of propaganda
in the state-run media had created expectations of war and of substantial gains in any
conflict.376 Noting this sentiment, Bhutto remarked that Yayha would be “lynched by the
people”377 if he did not respond forcefully to these Indian incursions. “We had to take
this action,” General Gul Hassan argued on 3 December, “otherwise we will not be able
to wear our uniforms…We are being exposed to the charge that we are sitting and doing
nothing.”378 Western press reports and Indian declarations were also openly contradicting
the regime’s official line that order had been restored to East Pakistan and that Indian
forces had been repulsed. The regime’s moment of truth had arrived. As Richard Sisson
and Leo Rose note, for the regime “the actuality of tolerating what had been declared
intolerable was itself becoming intolerable.”379
The regime’s commitment to its project had done more than simply render a war
politically necessary, however. Pakistan’s grand strategy had also become slaved to the
task of ensuring regime survival, not state security. More specifically, the demands of
identity maintenance had at least three negative influences on the nature and conduct of
376 “Crush India” bumper stickers were extraordinarily popular during this period. See Zaheer 1994: 355-56 and Sisson and Rose 1990: 278-79. 377 Quoted in Sisson and Rose 1990: 230. 378 Quoted in Zaheer 1994 360. 379 Sisson and Rose 1990: 230.
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Pakistan’s strategy. First, the highly political nature of the Pakistan military led it to
privilege garrison duties and counterinsurgency in East Pakistan over strategic planning
and military reform in the wake of the 1965 war. Second, military effectiveness was
undermined because of a political need to conduct offensive campaigns that in reality the
Pakistani military lacked the training and resources to implement. Third, the inability to
retreat from prior rhetoric or to consider compromise positions led the regime to rely on
increasingly risky strategies in wartime that only increased the costs Yayha, and
ultimately Pakistan, would bear once these policies inevitably failed. Let us consider each
of these points in turn.
The inadequacy of Pakistan’s military planning quickly became apparent as its
opening offensives were easily brushed aside by Indian forces. Shockingly, Pakistan’s
military was still guided by War Directive No.4 (signed on 9 August 1967), which
committed Pakistan to a doctrine of pre-emptive strikes against India from West Pakistan.
Major strategic shifts, notably India’s alliance with the Soviet Union (August 1971) and
the rise of the Mukti Bahini, were totally ignored. Moreover, the military hierarchy
suffered from a lack of coordination and from a surfeit of skilled leadership. The military,
having “lost touch with reality,”380 also totally misread Indian intentions and capabilities,
and was accordingly shocked when the extent of India’s force amassing outside East
Pakistan finally became known.381
Though Pakistan’s declaration of war may have been politically opportune, it
could not have come at a worse time for the Pakistani military. Mired in an exhausting
counterinsurgency operation, East Pakistan’s forces were stretched thin and would be
unable to throwback the superior Indian army without assistance. Such assistance was
thought on the way; indeed, Pakistani military doctrine called for West Pakistani forces to
380 Cloughley 2000: 191. 381 On failure to update, see HRC 2000 [1971]: 394-402. See also Zaheer 1994: 361; Faruqui 2003: 58-63; Cohen 1998: 139-49.
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drive deep into Indian territory to force its leaders to withdraw the forces menacing East
Pakistan. Yet Yayha’s indecision, coupled with the poor coordination and material state
of the military itself, combined to blunt any such drive. General Niazi’s forces in East
Pakistan were therefore quickly encircled as his “fortress” defense allowed Indian
armored divisions to advance rapidly throughout East Pakistan.
Moreover, despite the poor showing of Pakistan’s military, the Yayha regime
continually chose to intensify and prolong the conflict rather than seek a quick resolution,
as unitary actor models of war-as-bargaining expect. To be sure, a two-week conflict is
not especially lengthy, and yet we find numerous examples of Pakistani leaders
complicating or rejecting proposals for a ceasefire that could have minimized their
losses.382 General Niazi, for example, issued orders that prohibited his soldiers from
withdrawing from their exposed positions until 75 per cent of each unit had been either
killed or wounded.383 Similarly, Yayha refused to countenance any United Nations
ceasefire because he was afraid that he would be forced to negotiate with the Awami
League, a move that would undercut his regime. As late as 15-16 December, while
negotiations for a ceasefire were being conducted at the UN, Yayha was publicly
declaring that Pakistan would launch an offensive even if East Pakistan was lost.384
Entrapped by its public rhetoric, the regime’s inability to “update” its beliefs in
the face of successive military defeats increased Pakistan’s losses in the war. Rolling the
dice, the regime opted for a preemptive strike against India that promised to restore
control over East Pakistan while also shoring up the erosion of its legitimacy at home.
Yet this decision, while politically imperative, only led to the partition of the Pakistani
state and the creation of Bangladesh. The impact of the war on the military was also
significant: some 93,000 Pakistani Prisoners of War were captured, while the bulk of its
382 Zaheer 1994: 410-11. 383 HRC 2000 [1971]: 257, 452, 472. 384 Zaheer 1994: 385, 390; Jones 2002: 180.
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armored forces were destroyed on the battlefield. And, perhaps most centrally, the regime
itself did not survive the public outcry that followed news of Pakistan’s unconditional
surrender. Spontaneous anti-regime riots broke out in West Pakistan, and on 20
December a defeated Yayha ceded power to his nemesis, Z.A. Bhutto.
Many of the most telling criticisms of Yayha’s military regime are found in the
Hamoodur Rehman Commission. Of particular interest is the Commission’s conclusion
that Yayha’s devotion to his identity project had led him to reject negotiations with the
Awami League, and Mujib in particular, prematurely. “The situation [in East Pakistan]
could have retrieved,” the Commission argued, “if negotiations for a political settlement
with the Awami League were restarted while there was still time.”385 Yayha’s foreign
policy also received critical scrutiny since it managed only to isolate Pakistan
internationally. “In this isolated position,” the Commission notes, “he [Yayha] had no
justification whatsoever either to start a war with India or to create conditions which were
ultimately bound to lead to such a culmination.”386
Yet despite the shock of military defeat and subsequent regime collapse, many of
the core precepts that marked the Pakistani project since 1947 remained unexamined. The
Commission’s own findings, for example, reveal a surprising degree of ideational
overhang; that is, despite its mandate of challenging existing premises, the Commission
denigrated the former regime for failing to implement the shared vision of Pakistan
properly. Among the most surprising of the Commission’s findings is the conclusion that
General Niazi was insubordinate for not disobeying his orders to surrender and for failing
to hold out longer, despite the higher casualty toll this would have created.387 Moreover,
the Commission concluded that the war should have been widened faster by launching a
full offensive into India from West Pakistan.388 And, in a move reminiscent of Stalinist
385 HRC 2000 [1971]: 93-99, 344-45, 372-7. 386 HRC 2000 [1971]: 356. 387 HRC 2000 [1971]: 157, 482-87. 388 HRC 2000 [1971]: 229.
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Russia, returning prisoners of war were suspected of being inculcated with heterodox
views. In particular, the Commission worried that these POWs, having been subject to
Indian propaganda, would now believe that Pakistan was torn by ethnic divisions, that
Pakistan itself was no longer viable, and that the martial spirit of the Hindu was now
conclusively demonstrated as superior to that of the Muslim.389
In short, the persistent commitment to the Pakistani project that had marked
successive regimes between 1947-71 was left unchallenged, and perhaps reinforced, by
the Commission. This commitment had led successive regimes to pursue the
institutionalization of an exclusive yet fragmented project that generated both internal
opposition and a proclivity to adopt risky foreign policies to silence this opposition. It
should be noted here that the collapse of these regimes, and of Pakistan itself, was not
foreordained. Rather, over time repeated crises and conflicts, both at home and abroad,
served to heighten each regime’s commitment to the project by raising the cost inherent
in changing courses. As each regime’s legitimacy came to hinge increasingly on its
fulfillment of the project, certain options were removed from the regime’s decision
matrix when dealing with issues like Kashmir or nascent Bengali nationalism. A
revisionist course toward India therefore became an appropriate, even a necessary, course
of action, one that promised to pay large dividends if carried out successfully. That such
policies were inherently risky was a secondary consideration when compared to the costs
of inaction for each regime. Ironically, Bhutto, who rose to power on the contradictions
inherent in Yayha’s fulfillment of the Pakistani project, would now assume power within
the ideational confines of the same project.
CONCLUSION
389 HRC 2000 [1971]: 494-95.
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Despite widely varying circumstances, Napoleon III and successive Pakistani
leaders pursued remarkably similar paths of revisionism. This revisionism stemmed from
a shared type of collective identity project and the pressures that arose from trying to
institutionalize it in the face of opposition. The structural similarities across the
legitimating projects of the Second Empire and post-secession Pakistan are quite
remarkable. Each regime, for example, relied upon internal scapegoats (Democ-Soc
adherents and republicans in France, Bengalis and “subversives” in Pakistan) to foster a
sense of collectivity. Moreover, each regime worked to entrench its vision through
homogenizing language policies and exclusionary hiring practices. In the realm of
external relations, each regime also wielded a foreign scapegoat – the Concert of Europe,
India – to rally support behind the regime. Support for “oppressed” nationalities in
neighboring states, along with a concomitant desire to reorganize the existing status quo
along national lines, also led each regime to pursue ambitious revisionist policies.
Yet these exclusionary projects also contained symbols and identities that were
subject to multiple interpretations. Over time, these identity markers became contested
and forced the regime to try to reconcile competing behavioral expectations. Indeed, in
both cases religion was a principal component of the identity project but one that quickly
became subject to competing interpretations that the regimes could not paper over.
Similarly, the ideals of the French Revolution and the proper range of Muslim
nationalism both became key ideological battlegrounds; each regime’s claim to be the
sole legitimate authority on defining these issues quickly became contested. Sitting atop
exclusive but fragmented identity projects, these regimes were increasingly entrapped in
their own rhetoric and thus compelled to pursue revisionist ventures that ultimately
destroyed them.
Though these regimes did collapse, however, we should not be quick to dismiss
the impact of their revisionist efforts. Napoleon III, for example, played a key role not
only in the creation of unified Italian and Prussian/German states but also in the loss of
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the intermediary states of South Germany. As Paul Schroeder has argued, these states
complicated European politics and therefore rendered it more flexible by increasing the
possibilities for managing relations without war.390 Their loss in turn made conflict in
Europe less avoidable and more widespread than it need have been. In Pakistan, the
failure of successive regimes to achieve promised ends – particularly centering around
Kashmir – convinced Z. Bhutto to seek nuclear weapons. Convinced that Pakistan could
never match India’s conventional strength, Bhutto would help to push the Indo-Pakistani
conflict to a new, even more dangerous, level. Pakistan’s post-1971 leaders also
sponsored guerrilla movements in Kashmir and Afghanistan as a way to bolster their
Islamic credentials, while efforts to create a state-run madrassa system would later yield
bitter fruit in the form of the Taliban.391
These cases also offer substantial support for several proposed hypotheses.
Despite censorship and routinized repression, opposition was able to mobilize against the
regime. Indeed, though these political systems are characterized as partial democracies
(or “hybrids”), political opposition did form and managed to co-opt many of the regime’s
own political institutions. In addition, these same surveillance agencies and censorship
policies acted to “dirty” the information available to the regime. Over time, these regimes
lost touch with the true state of public opinion in their societies and, as a result, were
forced to try to anticipate public sentiment. This policy would prove disastrous because it
meant that the regime quickly clung to its own rhetoric as a guidepost for action. In turn,
the regime, knowing that society was judging its actions by its now “spotlighted”
rhetoric, became entrapped in a cycle of outbidding with itself. Each action had to surpass
that of the last if the regime was to prove that its project was in fact appropriate and
worth embracing.
390 Schroeder 1984: 3-5. 391 Chakma 2002; Matinuddin 2002: 81-108; Roy 2002: 149-150
193
The security dilemma also emerges as an important social mechanism through
which identity projects are “hardened” over time. In both cases, early interactions with
significant Others – whether the conservative Powers of Europe or “the Hindu Raj” –
confirmed existing stereotypes. Successive crises not only cemented these stereotypes as
natural but also acted to foment grievances and to raise the frequency and intensity of
scapegoating sentiment. In effect, participation in a security dilemma directly impacted
these collective identity projects by heightening and sustaining their exclusivist content.
Moreover, the public nature of these crises worked to lock-in the regime’s own
commitment to its project by clarifying the costs of failure. As certain issues became
defined as indivisible (as in Kashmir) and as the boundaries between in- and out-groups
hardened, each regime’s room for maneuver shrunk. Paradoxically, the security dilemma
was at once reinforcing the regime’s identity project (and possibly the public’s
commitment to it) and undermining it by creating opportunities for success – or failure. It
is clear, too, that each of these regimes believed it could not survive a public humiliation
or failure at the hands of its rival. The regime’s decision tree had been pared to a single
branch as negotiations and compromise – let alone retreat – were ruled politically
impossible. War, on the other hand, was politically attractive and, indeed, necessary,
despite its inherent risks.
It is tempting to dismiss the Second Empire and Pakistan (1947-71) as “deviant”
cases of states that tried but failed at the game of realpolitik. Schroeder, for example,
judges Napoleon III harshly: “By 1870 his regime was a cadaver to which no one wished
to be tied. As an exercise in the dissipation of national power, security, and prestige,
Napoleon’s performance following the Crimean War is almost unparalleled.”392 Yet, as
we have seen, most regimes pursuing revisionism fail. These states are in fact
prototypical “realist” states in that they elected for the expansion of their power and
392 Schroeder 1972: 423.
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engaged in militaristic realpolitik. Nor can these states be dismissed as deviant because
their realpolitik stemmed from the demands of their identity projects rather than security
or economic reasons. To do so would mean that realist explanations are left unable to
explain such cases, despite the fact that these types of states are ostensibly the “home
turf” of realist security studies.
Finally, these cases provide numerous examples of “suboptimal” decisions that
are at odds with unitary actor war-as-bargaining theories of state behavior.393 Instead of
updating their beliefs and recasting their policy aims, these regimes pursued exactly the
opposite course: they increased the stakes involved in a particular conflict. Since these
regimes were choosing from a restricted menu, they often intensified conflicts instead of
entering negotiations or granting compromises because these options were no longer
available. Napoleon III, for example, had entrapped himself so badly that he had neither
sufficient arms nor allies to meet the Prussian threat, and yet he still opted to declare war.
Similarly, Pakistani leaders were never able to make the concessions necessary to
appease a growing Bengali nationalism even though it may have preserved Pakistan’s
territorial integrity. Moreover, in both the 1965 and 1971 wars Pakistani leaders
repeatedly elected to expand conflicts rather than retreat. Regimes, as Louis-Napoleon
noted, often perish by the means that they use to ensure their survival.
393 Reed 2003; Slantchev 2003; Lake 2003; Reiter 2003; Fearon 1995.
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4
July Days, July Storms: A Comparison Of French (1817-48) and Soviet (1917-45) Grand Strategies
For you should not press a desperate foe too hard.394
The reintegration of a defeated foe into the prevailing institutions and norms of a
given international order ranks among the most difficult task that statesmen face. In this
chapter, we examine how two European Great Powers – France (1815-48) and the Soviet
Union (1917-45) – reentered world politics after experiencing military defeat and foreign
occupation. Though separated by nearly a century, these countries shared a number of
important commonalities. Despite these shared characteristics, however, the strategies
adopted by each regime could not differ more sharply. Indeed, while the Bourbon
dynasty and its successor, Louis-Philippe’s regime, elected to pursue a doggedly status
quo policy, the Soviet Union reentered world politics as a committed revisionist state.
This chapter is tasked with explaining why these two similarly situated regimes
nonetheless diverged so markedly in their grand strategies. The chapter is divided into
three sections. First, the chapter outlines the nature of the method of difference research
design adopted here. Second, the chapter examines the first “slice” of the historical path
that each regime embarked upon. More specifically, I examine the evolution of identity
and grand strategy in France (1815-30) and in the Soviet Union (1917-31). The third
section moves further along in the temporal sequence, tracing the nature of Louis-
Philippe’s rule in France (1830-48) and the evolution of the Soviet identity project (1932-
45).
394 Sun Tzu, The Art of War, p.35.
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SELECTION RATIONALE AND A NOTE ABOUT HISTORIOGRAPHY
This chapter reverses the comparative logic of Chapter Three. I adopt here a
method of difference research design that seeks to explain why two similar states, France
(1815-48) and the Soviet Union (1917-45), pursued such radically different grand
strategies.395 The design enables us to eliminate alternative explanations by identifying
the presence of shared variables and ruling them out as the cause of the observed
divergence in behavior. Yet for this research design to be persuasive, we need to ensure
that these cases are indeed comparable. I undertake this task below (see Table 4.1).
395 Mahoney 2003: 341-46. See also Przeworski and Teune 1970: 34-39.
197
Table 4.1. France (1815-48) and the Soviet Union (1917-45)
Variables France (1815-48) Soviet Union (1917-45)
Nature of “shock” (a) Defeat in War? (b) New Regime? (c) New State? (d) Foreign Occupation?
Yes Yes Yes Yes
Yes Yes Yes Yes
Average Annual Share of System Capabilities
(COW Index)
13.99 percent
12.66 percent
Weak Neighbors Yes Yes
Alliances Yes but weak
Yes but weak
Polarity Multi-polar Multi-polar
Offense-Defense Balance
Democratizing? (Polity IV scores)
Offense-dominant
Partially 1816-29: -4 1830-48: -1
Offense-dominant
No 1917-22: -1 1923-26: -7 1927-32: -8 1933-45: -9
Regime Type Autocratic Totalitarian
Civil-Military Relations Civilian control Civilian (Party) control
State Capacity High High
Type of Identity Project Inclusive Mostly Coherent
Exclusive Variable Coherence
Type of Strategy Low Risk
Status Quo Increasingly Risk-acceptant
Revisionist
Final Outcome Status Quo Strategy Revisionist Strategy
198
These cases are comparable across three broad dimensions. First, each state
experienced a “shock” that collapsed the existing political order and forced the creation
of a new one. Since the shared presence of a “shock” may still obscure substantial
variation, it is important to unpack the concept to ensure that these shocks were
equivalent. We can break each shock into at least four aspects common to each case.
First, each shock came in the form of a substantial military defeat at the hands of
opposing coalitions, notably, the fourth Grand Coalition that defeated Napoleon I after
his futile Hundred Days campaign (1815) and the combined armies of the German and
Austrian empires in the Eastern Front that resulted in the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk (1917).
Second, each military defeat was followed by the collapse of the existing political order.
In each case, the erection of a new order was carried out by political actors (the Bourbon
dynasty and the Bolshevik Party) that lacked popular support. Third, each new regime
was faced with the question of revised state borders and substantial territorial loss. And,
finally, each new regime was faced with the presence, if short-lived, of occupying
military forces bent on extracting reparations (France) or overthrowing the nascent
government (the Soviet Union).
Second, values of several key variables at the international level are similar across
these cases. Each country possessed roughly equal average annual shares of their
respective system’s military and economic capabilities: France held almost 14 percent,
while the USSR held 12.7 percent (see Table 4.2).396 Both states were surrounded by
weak neighbors in the form of the newly reorganized German Confederation or the newly
independent Baltic and East European states. It should be noted, too, that each of these
territorial reorganizations was aimed in part at containing a resurgent France or Soviet
Russia. In addition, both states reentered their respective systems as pariah states, and
each faced not only suspicion but also institutions – the Concert of Europe, the Treaty of
396 COW Data, V.3.01.
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Versailles – designed to contain each power. Alliances, then, were shifting and tactical
rather than durable and deep, as witnessed by Anglo-French cooperation in the Crimea or
the Treaty of Rapallo that bound the two outcast states, Germany and the Soviet Union,
together. Each state was situated within a multipolar international system that was
dominated by offensive, rather than defensive, technologies, a variable often viewed as
conducive to expansionist ventures.397
397 Adams 2003/04: 45-83.
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Table 4.2. National Capabilities as a Percentage of Systemic Capabilities*
France (1815-48) Soviet Union (1917-45)
Year Share of Systemic Capabilities
Year Share of Systemic Capabilities
1817 11.7 1917 11.3 1818 11.5 1918 3.7 1819 12.1 1919 6.1 1820 12.4 1920 10.2 1821 12 1921 14.8 1822 13.7 1922 14.5 1823 15.3 1923 10.5 1824 14.3 1924 8.4 1825 14 1925 10.2 1826 14.1 1926 11.5 1827 13.8 1927 12 1828 14.7 1928 12.5 1829 14 1929 13.4 1830 14.3 1930 15 1831 15.2 1931 15.9 1832 14.4 1932 15.3 1833 14.1 1933 15.9 1834 14 1934 16.6 1835 13.9 1935 18.1 1836 13.8 1936 15 1837 13.9 1937 14.9 1838 13.9 1938 16.6 1839 13.7 1939 13.9 1840 1841 1842 1843 1844 1845 1846 1847
15.4 16 16
15.2 14.3 14.7 14
14.8
1940 1941 1942 1943 1944 1945
13.5 12.6 11.6 10.6 10.2 12.3
Average Share of
System Capabilities 13.99% 12.66%
*Source: COW Dataset, V.3.01.
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To be sure, these states are distinct in at least one key area: their relative
democratization scores. France, for example, shifts from a Polity IV democracy score of
–4 under the Bourbon Monarchy to a –1 during Louis-Philippe’s July Monarchy (1830-
48). The Soviet Union, by contrast, moves from a –1 in 1917 to a –9 (the lowest possible
score) in the 1933-45 era.398 Yet the observed grand strategy is directly opposite to the
expected pattern of behavior; we should see France, not the Soviet Union, as the state
more likely to engage in revisionism if the posited linkage between partial
democratization and aggressive foreign policies is correct.399 Other, potentially
important, variables are also shared by these states. Regime type varies only slightly
between an autocracy and a totalitarian state, for example, while both regimes were
marked by civilian (or Party) control over civil-military relations. Finally, each state had
a high level of capacity, and was capable of both penetrating society and of marshaling
impressive resources behind its military machine.
We might also note that these two states also share a final trait: they are both
substantively important cases that have been drawn upon by political scientists as
“building blocks” for theorizing. This is especially true of the Soviet case, whose
aggressive foreign policy has led it to be treated as a prototypical “realist” (and
revisionist) state by Jack Snyder, John Mearsheimer, Stephen Van Evera, and Randall
Schweller, among others.400 These accounts of Soviet foreign policy often turn on a view
of the Soviet Union (and Stalin) as a rational, calculating actor, where ideology plays a
minimal role, and where some combination of security concerns and psychological
defects led Stalin to pursue an expansionist foreign policy. There is little role for either
398 Polity IV Dataset. 399 Mansfield and Snyder, forthcoming. Earlier versions of the argument can be found in Mansfield and Snyder 2002: 292-337 and Mansfield and Snyder 1995. 400 Snyder 1991: 212-32; Mearsheimer 2001: 196-97, 313-16; Van Evera 1999: 175-77; Schweller 1998: 33-35, 164-69.
202
ideology – except as a cover for true “realist” motives – or societal resistance to the
Soviet project. As such, the account offered below sharply departs from conventional
accounts found in political science.
Similarly, though the case of post-Napoleonic Wars France has received much
less attention by political scientists, it remains a rare example of the successful
reintegration of a defeated Power into international society without a lengthy military
presence. Though such efforts ultimately failed, the thirty years of stability achieved by
the Congress system remains a notable achievement. The case also provides an important
negative comparative case for the theory being tested here. Following James Mahoney
and Gary Goertz, the case of post-Napoleonic France conforms to both the Rule of
Inclusion and the Rule of Exclusion for choosing negative cases. The Rule of Inclusion
stipulates that negative cases should be chosen when the outcome of interest – here,
revisionism – is possible. As outlined above, post-Napoleonic France had both the motive
and capacity to engage in sustained revisionism, yet deliberately turned away from such
pursuits. Similarly, the case of post-Napoleonic France fits with the Rule of Exclusion,
which argues that cases should be excluded if an existing theory rules out the possibility
of the outcome in question taking place. Again, if we follow neorealist premises about the
importance of material power and opportunity to expand, we find that post-Napoleonic
France should be included in any dataset of potential revisionists.401
It bears emphasizing that this chapter should be read in conjunction with Chapter
Three. The use of methods of agreement and difference at the same time poses a
significant hurdle for the proposed argument. Moreover, this chapter introduces variation
in both the independent variable (the identity project) and the dependent variable (type of
strategy). While Chapter Three highlighted how diverse states can nonetheless converge
on the same type of gambling strategy, this chapter examines how similar states can
401 Mahoney and Goertz 2004: 657-658.
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nonetheless pursue different strategies. The addition of these cases therefore introduces
variation across types of strategies as well as within the revisionist category, with the
Soviet Union an exemplar of a “cautious” revisionist compared to the “gambling”
revisionists of Chapter Three. In addition, variation is also introduced on the independent
variable, which is important even if we do observe clustering around certain types of
behavior (i.e. gambling strategies).
Finally, a word needs to be said about the nature of the sources relied upon for the
study of Soviet grand strategy. This case draws heavily on newly available materials as
well as recent trends in Russian-language historiography. In particular, this case study
unites two emerging trends in Russian historiography that have to date developed in
isolation from one another.
The first emerging trend centers around the study of popular resistance to Soviet
rule as well as once-foreign notions of Soviet “public opinion” and mass attitudes toward
Soviet ideology.402 These new materials challenge traditional accounts of the Soviet
Union as a totalitarian state indifferent to public opinion and suggest instead that public
opinion mattered, even during Stalin’s rule. A second new direction in Russian
historiography focuses on the nature of Soviet grand strategy. A surge of new documents
have shed new light on issues ranging from the Soviet Union’s participation in the
Spanish Civil War to the nature of Soviet military doctrine. In particular, the 1939-41 era
has been subject to a thorough reexamination, one that has sparked heated historical
debates.403
No claim has received more attention among Russian and, to a lesser extent,
German historians than the notion that Stalin was planning a preemptive strike on Nazi
402 The best overview in English of this emerging social history is found in Fitzpatrick 2004: 27-54. Key works in this literature include Mlechin 2004; Brandenburger 2002; Martin 2001; Davies 1997. 403 The best recent overviews of these debates (in English) can be found in Raack 2004: 134-37; Weeks 2002; Uldricks 1999: 626-43. The best monograph in this debate remains Mel’tiukhov 2000.
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forces in the summer of 1941. Though often unacknowledged by English-language
studies, a near consensus has emerged among Russian historians that such plans were in
the works. “Today,” A.N. Sakharov, the doyen of contemporary Russian historians,
writes, “it seems that no one doubts that Stalin had these intentions [to attack
preemptively]. Fierce debates only rage around its possible timing.”404 Because this
claim is controversial but central to my own argument, I devote some attention to these
historiographical debates.405 I have also followed a generous citation policy and, where
possible, have drawn on primary documents to support my argument. Where
disagreements still exist, or where the documentary record is incomplete, I note such
disagreements. Future archival access may one day shed light on these controversies;
with the current archival policies in place, however, such a date may be a remote one. To
work around these problems, I have endeavored (as with all chapters) to use multiple
types of evidence to increase our confidence that the conclusions drawn are plausible.
The combination of these two approaches to Soviet history offers an important corrective
to existing accounts of Soviet policy and regime motives in the 1930s.
II. DIVERGENT PATHS:
FRANCE (1815-30) AND THE SOVIET UNION (1917-31)
France, 1815-30
Post-Napoleonic France appears, at first glance, to be a “most likely” candidate
for the pursuit of a revisionist grand strategy. The Bourbon dynasty, newly restored to
power by foreign bayonets, had only shallow support among the French populace and
faced significant opposition from myriad political forces, including liberals, socialists,
and Bonapartist holdovers. Hatred of the Treaty of Paris, which ended the Napoleonic
Wars, the presence (until 1818) of 1.2 million foreign occupiers, and a significant 404 Sakharov 2002: 13. 405 Lustik 1996: 605-618.
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postwar depression could have provided the necessary kindling to spark another round of
revisionism. Indeed, given the substantial depth of support for Bonapartist ideals
(especially a desire for a strong, respected state) among the French people, the easiest
course of action for a new leadership was to leverage these grievances into political
capital on the home front.
Instead, the new Bourbon monarchy sought to dampen French enthusiasm for
revanchism. Aware of the dangers of stoking pro-Bonapartist sympathies in the populace,
the regime pursued a two-pronged rhetorical strategy aimed at securing France’s role as a
status quo power. At home, the regime worked to counter revanchist sentiment by
articulating a fairly inclusive vision of French identity, one that called for acceptance of
the monarchy and the importance of stability as the highest public good. Moving to crack
down on groups with alleged pro-Bonapartist leanings, the monarchy called for the
broader integration of different (propertied) classes into the political system. It also
worked to wrap itself in the cloak of Catholicism, arguing that a tight relationship existed
between the Church and the Monarchy. Historians agree that the regime’s project did in
fact win converts from among the population, though ultimately too few people were
persuaded of its legitimacy for the regime to survive an uprising in July 1830.406
Concern that the monarchy was sitting atop a very narrow base of societal support
led Louis XVIII and his successor, Charles X (crowned in 1825) to align themselves with
international society. Though the Concert of Europe was established to maintain the post-
Napoleonic order, the Bourbon monarchy viewed the Concert as a check against
Bonapartism at home by ensuring stability abroad. As a consequence, the monarchy
pushed for France’s acceptance into the Concert even though this arrangement meant
siding with the very Powers that had defeated Napoleon and occupied France. In fact,
Bourbon France was reincorporated into the circle of European Great Powers at the
406 See especially Schroeder 1993: 591-92 and Furet 1992: 269-325.
206
Congress of Aix-la-Chapelle (September-November 1818); all occupying forces had left
by December 1818. The new monarchy was aided in this pursuit of a status quo identity
by the prevailing norms among the Great Powers. States already part of the European
core, even after an expansionist war, were not given “criminal status” but instead were
viewed as fit for rehabilitation.407
The regime therefore combined relatively benign appeals to monarchy and
Church with an emphasis on France as a Great Power, with “Great Power” being defined
as status quo in content. It remained an open question, however, whether the regime
could demobilize Bonapartist sentiment and replace it with its own conservative vision of
French identity. As with all the regimes studied here, the Bourbon monarchy also devoted
considerable resources to the creation of surveillance bodies to tap popular moods.
Censorship also played a minor role in the regime’s efforts to drive out ideological rivals
to its own favored identity project. Measures were haphazard, however, and it was not
until June 1827 – only three years before the overthrow of the monarchy – that
censorship was officially reintroduced. Efforts to monitor or silence domestic opposition
remained weak and halting in comparison to the massive resources that would be
invested by Napoleon III. Such measures were ultimately unable to ensure the safety of
the Bourbon dynasty, and it collapsed during the July Days revolution (27-29 July
1830).408
Both Louis XVIII and Charles X remained rigidly consistent with a status quo
strategy even as their fortunes on the home front sank. Indeed, the most ambitious foreign
policy venture, that of an armed 100,000 man intervention in Spain, was actually taken
on the Concert’s behalf. At the 1822 Verona conference, the Bourbon monarchy sided
with the conservative Eastern powers and agreed that the revolution unfolding in northern
407 Simpson 2004: 235-49; Schroeder 2004: 37-58; and Richardson 1999: 48-79. The classic reference here is Kissinger 1957. 408 Kroen 2000; Brown 1996: 374-383; Pilbeam 1989: 319-338; Furet 1992: 320.
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Spain had to be suppressed. The subsequent April 1823 intervention by France would not
end until 1827, when France withdrew its forces without securing any tangible territorial
or material gains. Even the prestige gains on the world stage from the intervention failed
to impress French citizens. A subsequent operation to collect debts in Algeria (January
1830) also did little to reverse the fortunes of the regime, the capture of Algiers in July
1830 notwithstanding.409
Note, too, that it was not a lack of either absolute or relative military capacity that
accounts for the curious passivity of French strategy following its wartime defeat. France
clearly had no difficulty projecting a sizable force into Spain while financing the entire
costs of the intervention from the French Treasury. Moreover, it is not as though the
Concert presented France with a united front that barred any French revisionism. To be
sure, the Concert was designed to keep France in check. Yet substantial fissures opened
within the ranks of the Concert members as early as 1823, a date some historians
conclude represents the high-water mark of nineteenth-century institutional cooperation.
Proposals for relaxing the anti-French nature of the Concert had indeed been floated by
Britain as early as the Congress’ first meeting at Aix-la-Chapelle.410 We must therefore
search elsewhere for the origins of France’s status quo orientation, a fact that becomes
especially clear when we examine the foreign policy of Louis-Philippe (1830-1848).
The Soviet Union, 1917-1931
Forged in the bloody aftermath of World War One, the new Bolshevik
government in Soviet Russia struggled from the first just to establish itself as the sole
authority in Russia. Between 1917 and 1922, we can speak of neither a coherent Soviet
government nor a stable identity project. Indeed, the Bolsheviks were faced with a raging
409 Darriulat 1995: 129-47 and Lefebvre 1992: 3-14. 410 Schroeder 1993: 593-94.
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civil war that fused Tsarist and nationalist opposition forces with intervention by foreign
armies. These developments would leave an indelible, though by no means exclusive,
impact on the nature of the Soviet identity project.411
By 1922, however, we witness the emergence of a Soviet identity project that is
backed by the resources of the new Soviet state. As with the other cases examined here,
the central task that now lay before the Soviet regime was the extension of its control
over the vast Russian space. No task was more central than persuading society –
including remnant pockets of armed resistance – to accept (and obey) the new regime. To
that end, the Bolsheviks constructed an identity project that drew on a number of
different principles and role identities.
Couched in the terms of this dissertation’s theoretical framework, the Soviet
project was characterized by both its exclusive nature and its fragmentary nature. In
comparative terms, however, neither its degree of exclusivity nor fragmentation
approached the levels witnessed in the 1930s. The project itself was centered around
socialist and class-based principles. Universalistic ideals, notably the spread of socialist
revolution, were married with a rejection of Russian nationalism and “Great Power
chauvinism.” Though revolutionary zeal would slowly fade until “socialism in one
country” became the dominant theme, both Vladimir Lenin and his successor, Joseph
Stalin continued to eschew the use of Russian nationalism throughout the 1920s.412
Substantial effort, both rhetorical and material, was poured into the construction
of ethnic units, even if they did not exist before. This explicit embrace of the nationality
principle reached its height in the “Piedmont principle,” where ethnic nations inside the
Soviet Union (i.e. Ukraine) were used as examples of Soviet enlightenment and
tolerance. By actively encouraging Polish, German, and Finnish peoples to settle the
411 For the impact of the civil war on the Bolshevik project, see Holquist 2003: 19-45; Holquist 2001: 209-27. 412 Brandenburger 2002: 1-42.
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borderlands, it was hoped that the Soviet Union might gain a measure of influence over
similar populations in the neighboring states of Central Europe. As such, the Soviet
project deliberately minimized the role of the Russian populace in favor of new ethnically
defined minorities in the Soviet “affirmative action empire.”413
Several of the principles contained within the Soviet identity bundle also
combined to create another role identity for the Soviet Union on the world stage: pariah.
Its Communist ideology and revolutionary ideals stood sharply at odds with the content
of international society in the immediate post-war era. Unlike post-Napoleonic France,
the Soviet Union was ostracized in international society. Instead of being integrated into
the leading institutions of the age, the Soviet Union was denied diplomatic recognition
until 1924. Moreover, the Soviet Union did not join the leading international organization
of the day, the League of Nations, until 1934. Driven by the belief that foreign policy is
driven by forms of social relations, the Soviet project was founded on a notion that the
capitalist states were implacably hostile to the Soviet Union. Peaceful coexistence, to the
extent that it could be attained, was a temporary resting place, not a stable outcome, in
the struggle between contradictory politico-economic systems.414
The pressing need for the regime to legitimate itself, along with the immediate
experience of the civil war era, led Lenin to construct a surveillance apparatus of
increasing scale and complexity. One of the most important developments in the
construction of the Soviet state throughout the 1920s is the institutionalization of the
Cheka (later GPU and then OGPU) secret police system. To be sure, Soviet authorities
faced serious difficulties in extending the reach of the state to the border-lands, and
armed conflict continued throughout the 1920s (especially in the Caucasus). But the need
to monitor public attitudes in the major urban centers also emerged as a priority for a
regime unsure of its own standing. A network of unpaid informants was painstakingly
413 Martin 2001. 414 One of the best overviews of Soviet diplomacy in the 1920s is found in Jacobsen 1994.
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constructed, unfurling in all metropolitan areas as a means of sampling the winds of a
capacious populace. Newly released archival material reveals the importance that both
Lenin and Stalin placed on assessing the political mood. Weekly and monthly reports,
known as svodki, were written by secret police organs and then distributed vertically to
Party leaders for nearly all regions of the USSR.415
The value of these svodki has been hotly contested by historians, however. It is
clear that these documents cannot be used alone to assess the true state of public opinion
during the Soviet era. Alarmist information and wildly exaggerated claims about the size
of societal opposition are the norm, rather than the exception, with these reports.
Nonetheless, the svodki yield important clues about how badly the regime was polluting
its own information about public opinion even at this early date. This dirtying of
information would only increase in severity once the Chekist system was institutionalized
in the mid-1920s and then greatly expanded in the 1930s. Though studies of Soviet public
opinion in the 1920s are only now taking advantage of new archival materials, we do
know that Stalin was still faced with both armed resistance and political opposition (at
both the elite and mass levels) when he secured control of the Party in 1928.416
Following from the exclusive and somewhat fragmented nature of the Soviet
identity project we can classify Soviet strategy in the 1920s as cautiously revisionist. The
Treaty of Rapallo, signed between Germany and the USSR in 1922, is emblematic of
both countries’ pariah status and the limited nature of Soviet actions in the period.417
Secret collaboration between the two powers notwithstanding, Soviet leaders largely took
a pragmatic approach to the furthering of a socialist revolution in Europe. “Peaceful
415 Finkel 2004: 299-320; Park and Brandenburger 2004: 554-59. 416 Scholarly treatment of svodki has been improved immeasurably by the publication of “Sovershenno sekretno:” Lubianka--Stalinu o polozhenii v strane (1922-1934 gg.) [“Top Secret” – Lubiyanka to Stalin on the state of the nation, 1922-34]. This is a multiple volume (seven and counting) series headed by the Institute of Russian History that publishes correspondence from regional NKVD-GPU officials. 417 Nekrich 1997: 1-56.
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coexistence” allowed Soviet leaders to concentrate on safeguarding the socialist
revolution at home even as it skillfully sought to exploit divisions within the capitalist
world. We should not discard the revolutionary and communist aspects of the identity
project entirely, however. The use of the Communist International (Comintern) to support
Communist parties in Europe was a result of the regime’s public commitment to its
revolutionary heritage.
Though the Soviet regime had scored some impressive gains – the extension of
Soviet power to the regions, a massive industrialization drive and first Five Year Plan – it
had yet to consolidate its rule.418 Concern over the public mood, as well as the existence
of rogue actors within society, suffused the regime’s actions. In addition, an international
environment perceived as hostile and zero-sum in nature only increased the regime’s
fears about survival. Scapegoating against domestic and external actors therefore
assumed a prominent place in the Soviet identity project. Despite the constant presence
(real or imagined) of these enemies, however, the Soviet project had not yet reached its
own apex of exclusivity. Indeed, substantial resources were invested in securing
homelands for ethnic minorities – often newly invented – and in universal language of
class and internationalism that permitted room for neither Russian nationalism or Great
Power chauvinism. Whether the regime could consolidate itself on these relatively banal
themes remained to be seen.
III. JULY DAYS, JULY “THUNDERSTORMS”:
LOUIS-PHILLIPE’S FRANCE (1830-48) AND THE SOVIET UNION (1932-45) Louis-Philippe’s France, 1830-48
Though the overthrow of the Bourbon dynasty in July 1830 is often treated as a
decisive breakpoint in French history, Louis-Philippe’s successor regime owed much to
its predecessor. As Jeremy Popkin notes, the 1830 uprisings represented a “revolution 418 On the militarization of Soviet society through industrialization, see Stone 2000.
212
that stopped halfway.”419 Nowhere is this sentiment more true than in the respective
nature of each regime’s legitimating project. While Louis-Philippe placed less emphasis
on Catholicism as a unifying ideal, his regime’s rhetoric traveled the same well-worn
paths as those etched by the Bourbon dynasty. Conservatism was matched with a
pervasive fear of the subversive power of Bonapartist principles, a fusion that led Louis-
Philippe to order a crackdown on potential opposition and to purge the leading ranks of
his bureaucracies. A modest expansion of the political opportunity space was undertaken:
the size of the electorate was expanded, for example, leading to a shift in France’s Polity
IV score from –4 under the Bourbons to a –1 under Louis-Philippe.
Aware that Bonapartist sentiment still ran deep among the French public, Louis-
Philippe, following the Bourbon precedent, argued that French greatness could only be
attained by upholding the Concert system. As such, Louis-Philippe strove for recognition
and status in world politics from the leading Powers, much to the chagrin of nationalists
and Bonapartists in French society. Only through maintenance of France’s role identity as
a guarantor of international stability and order could it avoid further domestic upheavals
that might topple the fragile regime. Stability, then, was the catch-phrase of regime
rhetoric; the greatest danger, from the regime’s point of view, lay in the possibility that
“the world shall be unkinged.”420 Because the new regime was viewed with suspicion by
the other Powers – it had, after all, trampled legitimist principles in its rise to power – it
believed it needed to work especially hard to burnish its status quo credentials.
Such efforts, however, would be the cause for considerable domestic disapproval.
Support for a continuation of the revolution and a more aggressive foreign policy was
particularly high among the parti du mouvement, a sizable grouping that played an
important role in the July Revolution. The continued existence of this movement
throughout the 1830s-40s would be a constant source of concern for Louis-Philippe. The
419 Popkin 2002: 5. 420 Collingham 1998: 319.
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parti, for example, forced Louis-Philippe to oversell the putative gains from his status
quo policies as a way of deflecting criticism that France was being unduly repressed
under the Concert system. Each “success” abroad only further convinced the parti and its
widespread support that French interests were being sacrificed in the name of a peace that
was only stable because it rested on continued French subservience. Perhaps
unsurprisingly, Louis-Philippe relied much more heavily on the Army to quell rebellion
(i.e. in 1831, 1834) than during the reign of Charles X.421
Given the nature of the July Monarchy’s rhetoric, it is unsurprising that it pursued
a status quo policy aimed at peace abroad and stability, if not popularity, on the domestic
front. In fact, Paul Schroeder has argued that “the July Monarchy was the most peaceful,
status quo-oriented regime that France had in the nineteenth century – perhaps ever.”422
A central plank of the regime’s strategy was to bind itself closely to Britain, a move that
made sense from a realpolitik standpoint but one that was roundly criticized
domestically.423 The history of Louis-Philippe’s regime is one of “missed” chances to use
military force in a bid to revise the Concert system. Conservative opinion favored a war
at the beginning of the regime’s tenure, for example, as a means of consolidating support
for the new monarchy. Such opinions were ignored. Louis-Philippe also refused to
intervene militarily in Poland (1830-31) and Italy (1831-32) to support revolutionary
uprisings that were couched in Bonapartist language. He even refused to countenance
minor territorial acquisitions during the dissolution of the United Netherlands (1830).424
Public discussion of even hypothetical gains was forbidden on the grounds that it might
ignite nationalist sentiment. The only place where military force was actively employed
was in Algeria, where Louis-Philippe continued the Bourbon dynasty’s policy of scoring
points in a safe location with no ties to Europe.
421 Spitzer 2001: 37-61; Margadant 1999: 1461-96; Day 1993: 225-37; Collingham 1998: 246. 422 Schroeder 1993: 677. 423 Collingham 1988: 388. 424 See especially Schroeder 1993: 666-98, 726-55.
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So pro-status quo was Louis-Philippe’s strategy that the one example of
revisionist behavior, notably, France’s sparking of an Eastern crisis (1839-40), confirms
the near immutable nature of the regime’s policy. Louis-Philippe’s support of Mehemet
Ali (the Pasha of Egypt) in his bid to secede from the Ottoman Empire led France into a
diplomatic showdown with the other leading Powers who favored maintaining the
Ottoman Porte’s territorial integrity. Trapped in a brinkmanship crisis, Louis-Philippe
threatened war and issued orders to increase the French Army’s size to almost 640,000
men. Now isolated, and unwilling (or unable) to jettison the past decade of the regime’s
rhetoric, Louis-Philippe blinked first. Sacking his government, Louis-Philippe returned to
his status quo policy and eagerly sought readmission to the Concert.425
Public disgust at such “weakness” would add 1840 to the list of injustices that
France had suffered since 1815. A search would now begin for a ruler capable of
restoring France’s grandeur in the world; such a leader would be found in Napoleon III.
The abdication of Louis-Philippe (24 February 1848) in the face of mounting public
protests came as a result of his inability to secure the allegiance of his populace with a
broadly inclusive and coherent identity project. The next ruler, seeking to avoid this
mistake, would anchor his legitimacy in a project that railed against the nature of the
international order as well as internal enemies (see Chapter Three).
The Soviet Union, 1932-45
The historiography of the Soviet Union has traditionally viewed the 1930s as
marked by two pivotal events: the consolidation of Soviet rule at home and the inevitable
clash with Nazi Germany abroad.426 Neither of these views is entirely accurate, however.
As I argue here, the 1930s were set apart by the growing exclusivity of the Soviet project
425 Cox and Billinger 1987: 587-92. 426 For a recent restatement of the traditional position, see Overy 2004: 304-48, 441-82.
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and its increasing fragmentation. Far from stable, the regime was increasingly
preoccupied with the fear that Soviet society was slipping from its grasp. In addition, the
shift toward harsher rhetoric and practices was not a response to the rise of Hitler, as so
often is argued. Instead, the “shock” to the Soviet identity project arose from a seemingly
mundane event: the grain requisition crisis (1932-33) and the subsequent “rebellion” in
Ukraine, which Soviet leaders believed threatened to existence of the Soviet Union itself.
Crucially, this move toward a more exclusive and fragmented project preceded the rise of
Hitler or the emergence of Nazi Germany as a security threat. After all, Nazi Germany
only began openly challenging the Versailles Treaty system in 1935-36, at which point
the reorientation of the Soviet project was in full swing.427
A combination of an increasingly exclusive and fragmented identity project and a
restive, if not rebellious, domestic audience would have serious consequences for Soviet
strategy. The 1932-41 era witnessed the gradual entrapment of the Soviet regime as
options were pruned from its choice set. In fact, the awareness of pockets of societal
resistance, and a persistent inability to win over these recalcitrant elements, would
compel the regime to adopt ever-riskier strategies as a means of scoring gains on the
home front. Soviet strategy moved quickly up the revisionist curve (see Figure 2.2) over
this period, as intervention in Spain (1936-39) was followed by the Nazi-Soviet pact, the
invasion of Poland, and an ill-fated attempt to occupy Finland (1940). Perhaps most
stunningly, the pressure on the regime to consolidate itself through victories abroad
would lead Stalin to contemplate, and prepare for, a preemptive strike on Nazi forces in
summer 1941. That a “safer” route to security, namely, pursuing collective security with
427 This point bears emphasizing, for Hitler’s role, while important, has perhaps been overplayed. The shift in Soviet identity clearly predates both Hitler’s electoral success and negative shifts in the material environment (i.e. the relative balance of power). Moreover, Poland, not Germany, was viewed as the most dire threat to the Soviet Union until at least 1936, when large-scale purges and deportations of Polish “spies” in the USSR took place. On this point, see Morris 2004: 751-66.
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the Western democracies, existed but was abandoned only further underscores the impact
that a regime’s rhetoric can have on its strategic options.
There is emerging evidence that the Stalinist regime, despite its apparent success
at creating institutions of power, was concerned as early as 1931 about the failings of its
identity project. David Brandenburger has noted, for example, that “the party hierarchy
had become frustrated with the previous decade’s ideological line, particularly its
materialist and antipatriotic dimensions.”428 At issue was the fear that the “bloodless”
symbols of the revolution – especially class and internationalism – were simply too
mundane to mobilize the population. Building “socialism in one country,” it was thought,
required a different type of content, one capable of fostering collective allegiance to the
new socialist Motherland. These early musings centered around the reintroduction of the
language of Russian nationalism, its folk traditions and heroes, and the deliberate
inculcation of patriotism. To avoid introducing charges of hypocrisy, however, such
changes were to be made slowly, as prior rhetoric was gradually downgraded in the
identity hierarchy.429
What really accelerated the evolution of the Soviet project, however, was the
failure of the 1932 harvest. Unable to feed the entire population, Stalin elected to secure
the loyalty of the cities by forcibly requisitioning grain from the countryside. Two
regions – Ukraine and the North Caucasus – proved unable to meet the wildly unrealistic
quotas set by the regime. These failures, as Terry Martin argues, were viewed by Stalin as
evidence of political resistance. Fears were stoked that the Soviet Union might itself
unravel if ethnic minorities were able to challenge the center. Stalin had essentially
inverted the Piedmont principle: these minorities, no longer a wedge into neighboring
states, had now become a Trojan horse that enabled foreign Powers to shatter the Soviet
428 Brandenburger 2002: 27. 429 The best treatments of the issue are found in Brandenburger 2002, Davies 1997, and Hoffmann 2004.
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Union from within. Poland, as Stalin wrote to Ukraine’s First Party Secretary Lazar
Kaganovich on 11 August 1932, was the principal threat.
The most important thing now is Ukraine. Things in Ukraine are bad…If we don’t take measures now to correct the situation in Ukraine, we may lose Ukraine. Keep in mind that Pilsudski [Poland’s President] is not sleeping, and his agents in Ukraine are many times stronger than [Ukrainian GPU head] Redens and [First Secretary] Kosior think. Keep in mind that in the Ukrainian Communist Party (500 thousand members, ha-ha) there are not a few (yes, not a few) rotten elements…I repeat, we may lose Ukraine.430
The solution to this danger of internal subversion was simple: forced population
transfers and ethnic cleansing. In January 1933, some 60,000 Kuban Cossacks were
deported from Ukraine to ensure its continued political loyalty. This would be a pattern
repeated at least nine other times in the 1933-38 era as other potentially suspect diaspora
populations – including Poles, Germans, and the peoples of the Caucasus – were targeted.
Note, however, that this threat to the regime fits uneasily within the traditional realist
canon. Instead, “threat” here is social in nature, and was made possible only by the prior
commitment of the regime to the Piedmont principle and the valorization of ethnic
minorities in the borderlands. Such cleansings provide graphic proof of the continued
shift of the regime toward reliance on increasingly exclusive rhetoric and practices. The
sheer scale of these operations is remarkable. Martin concludes, for example, that
ethnically motivated arrests comprised 20 percent of all arrests and 33 percent of all
executions during the Great Terror (see below).431
These ethnically exclusivist practices, now layered atop existing class distinctions
in Soviet society, were the product of a deeper change stirring within the Soviet project.
430 Quoted in Martin 1998: 844-45. 431 Martin 1998: 855-56 for numbers involved.
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As noted above, by 1930 the regime was seeking to retool its rhetoric to instill a greater
sense of allegiance among the public. In effect, the regime had recognized that its
existing project had met with only lukewarm acceptance among the populace, and it had
trapped itself in an equilibrium that would yield only modest legitimacy gains. By 1934,
then, a massive effort was undertaken to overhaul the education system to promote new
ideas about Soviet collective identity. What were these themes? The regime began
selectively appropriating historical figures from Russia’s past as exemplars of the “new”
Soviet Man. Russian folk heroes jostled with Tsarist rulers (especially Ivan the Terrible
and Peter the Great) and literary figures (especially Pushkin) for seating in the new Soviet
pantheon. The special role afforded to ethnic minorities was now superseded by an
emphasis on the thousand year lineage of the Russian state. The new Soviet Man, it
seemed, would now be clothed in the garb of Russo-centrism.
Yet the regime would find the reorientation of its project much more difficult than
it had anticipated. Prior language of internationalism and class struggle was not – could
not – be dropped entirely without incurring some cost among the segment of the
population for which these ideals still resonated. As such, this new language of Russian
nationalism jibed uneasily with older themes, introducing confusion and fragmentation
into the regime’s own rhetoric. Proletariats, once Soviet society’s vanguard class, was
now supposed to be transformed into Russians as the vanguard nation. Efforts to
propagate a “Friendship of the Peoples” after 1935 clashed sharply with the simultaneous
campaign to deport suspect minority populations. Efforts to weave a single national
narrative around the unbroken thousand year history of the Russian state seemed artificial
given the oft-repeated Bolshevik claims to a heroic role in overthrowing the Tsarist state.
Once-prominent internationalist claims of worker solidarity still lingered even as the
regime sought to articulate a Great Power role for the Soviet Union in world politics.432
432 Brandenburger 2002: 43-53, 115.
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The introduction of these contradictions into official rhetoric could not have come
at a worse time for the stability of the Stalinist regime. To be sure, the regime’s new
rhetoric did find a more receptive audience than prior symbols, though our state of
knowledge of public opinion in the 1930s remains in its infancy. Yet new archival
research has uncovered the existence of substantial pockets of resistance among a society
previously characterized as “flattened.” Crimes against the state surged in the 1930s, for
example, and armed bandit formations actually increased in number and strength
throughout the 1930s. David Shearer argues, for example, that Stalin’s regime
“resembled an occupying but beleaguered army, victorious in the imposition of state
socialism, but overextended, its resources stretched thin.”433 Resistance during
collectivization and de-kulakization also carried over into more subtle but equally as
important economic resistance, whether in the form of work slowdowns or informal
market networks.
Disenchantment with Soviet authority even extended into the realm of popular
songs (chastushki) and letter-writing campaigns that denigrated the regime’s hypocrisy.
Perhaps most alarming from the regime’s point of view were chastushki that, in response
to rising concerns about a European war, openly welcomed such an occurrence because it
would free the people from Soviet rule. One popular poem (circa 1936-37) neatly
captured this sentiment:
Soon Soviet power
Will fly out like a cork From a beer bottle onto the path.
The way we live in captivity We don’t have long to live
We only have to live until the war…
Not for long, all will pass The enemy will kill Stalin For soon there’ll be war
433 Shearer 1998: 131.
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And then, then, then, Stalin will be kind forever
When he’s gone freedom forever.434
We do not, however, want to overemphasize the impact of this domestic
opposition.435 While it did exist in myriad forms, its threat nonetheless still lay in the
realm of potential, rather than actual, challenge to the regime’s rule. Yet we do know that
the regime rapidly accelerated its efforts to monitor society as its fears mounted that the
population was sliding out from under it. Building on the already extensive efforts of the
1920s, the Soviet regime devoted substantial resources to the creation and subsequent
expansion of the NKVD (the forerunner to the KGB). The silencing of threats, whether
real or imagined, perhaps took its height in the massive construction of the prison camp
(GULAG) system throughout the 1930s.436 Though most archival materials, particularly
from the secret services, remain inaccessible, it is reasonable to assume that such efforts
to control society in fact “dirtied” the regime’s information supply. If so, we might expect
that regime to begin taking pro-active measures to cement allegiance through spectacular
(in both senses of the word) displays.
In fact, it appears that the regime had grown increasingly concerned about the
state of its relationship with society by 1936.437 Fearing that the project had stalled, the
regime hit upon two means to rally in-group sentiment. First, Stalin and his coterie of
close advisors opted for a series of mock trials – the Great Purges – that would become
increasingly widespread and public as time went on. Second, Stalin looked abroad for
434 Cited in Davies 1997: 94. See also “Prilozhenie No.3: Gruppirovka Kulatskoi Molodezhi [1928],” in “Sovershenno sekretno:” Lubianka--Stalinu o polozhenii v strane Tom.6, pp.552-56 for more examples of songs deemed subversive. 435 An important debate has now emerged over questions of classifying “opposition” and “resistance” during Stalin’s rule. See for example: Fürst 2002: 353-75; Kuromiya 2003: 631-68; Fürst 2003: 789-802. 436 Khlevniuk 2004 and Applebaum 2003. 437 One important source of information from society came in the forms of protest letters written to various agencies (and, on occasion, to Stalin himself). See, for example, Nerard 2002: 125-44; Fitzpatrick 1996: 78-105; Hellback 1996: 344-73.
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additional avenues to scoring victories on the home front. These efforts took the form a
gradually escalating intervention in the Spanish Civil War (1936-39).
Ironically, the Great Purges would actually undermine, rather than further
consolidate, the regime’s evolving Russo-centric identity project. Efforts to valorize
certain Bolshevik figures, for example, foundered when these heroes in the Soviet
pantheon were arrested during the Party purges. As David Brandenburger notes, the
Stalinist regime’s attempts to promote “mobilization by example” through a vigorous
film and media campaign was “virtually hamstrung” by simultaneous efforts to remove
perceived political rivals.438 There is no question that these purges were momentarily
successful at deflecting attention away from the regime’s perceived shortcomings. Yet, in
the end, the regime’s legitimization efforts stalled as prominent individuals were paraded
before mock trials. That Stalin ratcheted up concern over “traitors and wreckers” in the
1936-38 era as a means of cementing his rule is clearly demonstrated in Table 4.3.
438 Brandenburger 2002: 49-50, 115.
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Table 4.3. Secret Police Arrests, 1929-39 (By Alleged Crime).439
Year “Counter-
Revolutionary” Crimes “Anti-Soviet”
Agitation Other Total
1929 132,799 51,396 29,927 162,726 1930 266,729 0 64,865 331,544 1931 343,734 100,963 135,331 479,065 1932 195,540 23,484 214,893 410,433 1933 283,029 32,370 222,227 505,526 1934 90,417 16,788 114,756 205,173 1935 108,935 43,686 84,148 193,083 1936 91,127 32,110 40,041 131,168 1937 779,056 234,301 157,694 936,750 1938 593,326 57,366 45,183 638,509
Source. Getty and Naumov, The Road to Terror, (1999), p.588.
The noxious combination of ethnic cleansing and scapegoating against internal
enemies underscore the increasingly exclusivity of the Soviet project as the 1930s
unfolded. Moreover, the clash between still-present, if fading, internationalist rhetoric,
and a stalling Russo-centric project, meant that the regime’s probability of adopting
revisionist actions was increasing. Interestingly, highly-placed officials, notably A.A.
Zhdanov and A.A. Andreev, recognized that these purges, while politically expedient,
were actually getting out of hand and weakening the state.440 Indeed, Arch Getty and
Oleg Naumov conclude that fears of a coup were palpable in the 1930s. “The
nomenklatura knew better than anyone,” they argue, “just how unstable the social and
political system of the USSR was in the 1930s, and it was afraid.”441 The Stalinist
regime, “like a besieged fortress,” therefore resorted to the Great Terror out of fear, not
strength, as it sought to instill compliance, if not loyalty, to the regime and its ideals.442
439 Note, too, that the frequency of arrest also surges during the Ukrainian crisis of 1931-33. 440 Getty and Naumov 1999: 528-31. See especially Document No.189, “Extract from Protocol #65 of the Politburo of the CC. #110 [8 October 1938],” pp.531-32 and Document No.190, “Supplement to Protocol #65 [17 November 1938],” pp.532-37. 441 Getty and Naumov 1999: 583-84. 442 The purge of the military cut especially deep, with some 18,000-32,000 high-ranking officers being removed from their positions. New research has concluded that purge had less of an impact on military performance than previously thought. See, for example, Mlechin 2004: 128-194 and
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Deepening Soviet involvement in the Spanish Civil War (1936-39) also
represented a second effort by the regime to score victories. Though Stalin maintained
that the USSR was acting on behalf of collective security in Europe, new archival
releases suggest a very different set of motives. Instead, the Soviet Union was bent on
creating a Soviet-style republic in Spain by establishing firm control over the Spanish
Community Party. Secondary motives also included liberating Spain from the “burden”
of its extensive gold reserves and providing a test bed for new Soviet military equipment
and tactics. “Operation X,” the Soviet regime’s code name for its involvement in Spain,
was driven by a desire to satisfy domestic expectations that the USSR would support the
“worker’s revolution” that was unfolding in Spain. Indeed, if a People’s Republic could
be created in the face of Fascist opposition, then the regime would have scored an
impressive victory on both the home front and the world stage. That the Soviet Union
failed in its endeavor would also have serious ramifications for future Soviet strategy.
The Soviet Union was now more isolated in Europe than at any point in the 1930s, a fact
that would make it even harder to cobble together a united anti-Fascist front.443
There is no question that the argument presented here cuts across the grain of
traditional historiography. Most accounts of Soviet foreign policy emphasize its
flexibility. Indeed, it is often treated as the exemplar of realpolitik, where neither societal
influence nor ideology are though to distort the pursuit of security (if not expansion).444
Yet I argue that the Stalinist regime was facing pressure from below and from abroad to
conform to its prior rhetoric, a commitment that narrowed its choice set over time until
the Soviet regime found itself in a position where foreign policy became a tool of regime
Mel’tiukhov 2000: 295-99. Even if the purge did not affect doctrine, however, there is no question that it negatively affected Western perceptions of Soviet military effectiveness. See Roberts 1996: 383-414. 443 Payne 2004: 128-29. See also the primary documents in Radosh, Habeck, and Sevost´ianov 2001: 261-367. 444 For a recent restatement of this position, including the argument that Stalin had only defensive (not preemptive) motives and that he was caught unawares by the Nazi attack, see Gorodetsky 1999.
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survival. During this 1936-41 period, we therefore see the Soviet Union approaching the
high-end of the “cautionary” revisionist curve outlined in Figure 2.2. This increasing risk-
acceptance, it is crucial to note, is not being driven by shifts in the material environment.
Neither a shifting relative balance of power nor changing military technologies such as
mechanization can account for the nature of Soviet policy in this era. Instead, the Soviet
regime was compelled to resort to risky policies because of its increasingly exclusivist
Russo-centrism and the rising incoherence of its own rhetorical claims.
We have already seen how the demands of identity maintenance dictated an
escalation of the regime’s involvement in the Spanish civil war. Such pressures were also
at work in the decision to sign a non-aggression pact with the Soviet Union’s sworn foe,
Nazi Germany, in August 1939. Long regarded as a key example of the malleability of a
state’s intentions, the Pact at once promised to resolve the regime’s problems at home
and threatened to intensify them. On the one hand, prior Soviet rhetoric had vilified the
Soviet Union’s best hopes for a stable allies – Great Britain and France – and had
therefore lengthened the odds that such a deal could be struck. Decades of such rhetoric,
coupled with increasingly suspicion of Soviet motives after its intervention in Spain, had
rendered such an alliance unlikely. Moreover, the dictates of regime survival and, above
all, its need for show trials, had led to a purge of the Soviet military that, from the
vantage point of France and Great Britain, had only undercut the Soviet Union’s
attractiveness as a useful military partner.
On the other hand, accommodation with Nazi Germany created opportunities for
scoring “easy” gains in Poland, the Baltic states, and Finland. It also held the distinct
advantage of removing the Soviet Union from an initial round of intra-capitalist, intra-
imperialist war in Europe. In essence, the value of the Pact for Stalin was the net effect
between possible gains of dealing with Germany (territorial and prestige gains) minus the
costs of hypocrisy for contradicting prior anti-Fascist claims. It is clear that the regime
took the prospects of societal discontent seriously. As V.A. Nevezhin has convincingly
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documented, Stalin was so concerned with the immediate public backlash that followed
the Pact’s signing that he ordered a massive propaganda campaign to persuade Soviet
citizens that the Pact did not, in fact, contradict prior claims. These efforts extended not
just across all media but also involved factory-floor educational rallies and informational
sessions at Party meetings.445
Though our knowledge of Soviet public opinion during this period is still in its
infancy, we do know that the regime’s about-face was far from popular. It is reasonable
to hypothesize that at least two consequences arose from this dramatic shift. First, it
injected an even-greater amount of uncertainty and dissonance within the regime’s
rhetoric, accelerating its further acceleration at a time when Stalin was already concerned
about the state of public opinion. Second, it raised popular expectations about the
regime’s goals. Far from “cheap talk,” the regime’s efforts to sell the Pact as consistent
with prior rhetoric may have raised expectations about the gains that would result. In
turn, the regime’s risk acceptance probably increased, as it was now aware that it had to
make the Pact pay off in the form of legitimacy returns.
From the vantage point of history, we can see that the Pact represented another
step on the path toward the adoption of “gambling” revisionist strategies. The subsequent
military campaigns in Poland (1939) and Finland (1939-40) also bear witness to the
regime’s newfound willingness to incur substantial risks in the hopes of securing
legitimacy-boosting gains. The Soviet military, despite its massive rearmament drive,
was ill-prepared for either operation. Indeed, new documentary evidence suggests that
both campaigns were marred by logistical difficulties, poor strategy, and, above all, an
unusual degree of haste and ill-preparedness. In each case, a short propaganda campaign
preceded ambitious offensives that sought quick victories for the home front.446 This
445 Nevezhin 1997: 186-251 and 1994: 164-71. See also Nadzhafov 1999: 154-67. 446 On expectations of rapid victory in Finland, see Nordling 2003: 137-57. In Poland, see Rukkas 2003: 110-113. See also Mel’tiukhov 2000: 306.
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strategy foundered badly in Finland, however, as Finnish forces mustered a staunch
defense that blunted the inept Soviet drive. Aware that such a setback “against such a
weak opponent will stimulate the anti-Soviet forces of the imperialists,”447 Stalin ordered
a redoubling of Soviet efforts. Some 400,000 Soviet soldiers were lost in only five
months of fighting; this short, victorious war came at a very high price indeed.
Attempts to use these “successes” to consolidate the regime’s standing had a
pernicious, if unexpected, effect on the Soviet choice set. These campaigns reinforced a
decades-long tradition of reliance on extremely offensive military doctrines. As a
consequence, the best defensive options for the regime were no longer deemed
appropriate since newly-expanded Soviet borders now incorporated restive and unreliable
populations. Defense in depth, perhaps the most logical strategy for the Soviet Union,
was rejected since it was feared that Germany could foment rebellion inside the Ukraine
or the Caucasus from its new perch in Poland.448 As late as May 1941, Soviet NKVD
squads were conducting massive sweeps within these territories to capture or destroy
untrustworthy elements.449 What they were not doing, however, was constructing new
defensive positions throughout these territories. Instead, the Soviet military clung ever
tighter to an offensive posture, one that argued that light screening forces could be used
to blunt any offensive at the point of contact, where reserves would then steamroll the
offensive and roll it back into Germany.
Moreover, overreliance on rapid, highly ambitious campaigns was matched by a
persistent reluctance to update military plans in the face of shifting realities. No updating
of defensive military plans took place between 1938 and August 1940, when plans were
447 Quoted in van Dyke 1997: 103. 448 Roberts 1995: 1293-1326. Roberts does not believe, however, that Soviet forces were preparing for an preemptive/preventive strike. 449 See, for example, “Dokladnaya Zapiska NKGB SSSR v TsK VKP(b),” in 1941-god, Vol.2, pp.221-23.
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finally adjusted to incorporate the annexation of new territories.450 Such plans were not
matched, however, with efforts to prepare, practice, or otherwise implement any
measures designed to defend these new territories. Despite the “menacing threat” of Nazi
Germany, the expected defensive preparations that neorealism would predict were
noticeable only by their half-hearted nature.
Plans were afoot, however, to strike Nazi Germany preemptively. New archival
evidence now suggests that Soviet military planners had drawn up no less than five
different offensives against Germany during 1940-41. As noted above, there is now a
near consensus among Russian scholars that Stalin was in fact plotting a preemptive
strike against Germany sometime during summer 1941 or, at the latest, summer 1942.
This emphasis on a preemptive strike is consistent with the pattern outlined above: that is,
an increasingly entrapped Soviet regime, one unsure of its standing with society but
seeking a clear and decisive victory that would cement citizen allegiance after less-than-
spectacular efforts in Poland, Finland, and the Baltic states. Because this claim remains
controversial, however, I detail the evidence for this position below.
The first pieces of evidence are supplied by declassified Soviet war planning. One
of the clearest statements of Soviet preemptive designs is provided by war plans dated 11
March 1941. The plan outlined an extremely ambitious offensive that tasked Soviet
forces with driving a wedge between German forces and their Balkan allies in Central
Europe. Calling for the offensive to begin on 12 June 1941, the plan’s endstate was
viewed as a successful drive to either Berlin or Prague, with the intermediate goal of
flanking Eastern Prussia. The speed of the imagined offensive is shocking: Soviet
military planners estimated that Soviet forces would be in Krakow in only eight days.451
450 Habeck 2003 provides the most comprehensive study of Soviet and Nazi doctrines to date. She concludes that these doctrines were “almost identical.” Unfortunately, she neglects the debate over whether a preemptive strike was being planned. Two of the best overviews of Soviet military planning are found in Spasibo 2004: 1-6 and Gor’kov 1993: 29-45. 451 Mel’tiukhov 2000: 314-17. To my knowledge, this military plan has not been made publicly available.
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One plan does not make a preemptive strike, however. Yet since the mid-1990s a
substantial debate emerged around a second, even more detailed, blueprint for an
offensive strike. This plan, entitled “Considerations of the Plan for the Strategic
Deployment of Soviet Armed Forces in Case of War with Germany and its Allies,” was
dated 15 May 1941. “We should preempt (upredit’) the enemy,” the memorandum
argued, “by deploying and attacking the German Army at the very moment when it has
reached the stage of deploying [to attack] but has not yet concentrated itself at the
front.”452 Again seeking to separate Germany from its southern allies with a quick, sharp
strike, the plan urges the adoption of “the following measures [Soviet troop movements]
without which it will not be possible to deliver a surprise strike against the enemy both
from the air and on the ground.”453 The document, unsigned but handwritten by Marshal
Zhukov himself, concludes with an order-of-battle for a massive Soviet deployment to
jumping-off points.
It is easy to dismiss this document, as some scholars do, as a working plan that
was never authorized, or even seen, by Stalin (but see below). Though the 15 May plan
does follow logically from a persistent Soviet proclivity for offensive doctrines, we could
be justified in dismissing the plan if no actions were taken to implement it. Yet we do
know that Soviet mobilization had begun in earnest as early as January 1941, with some
900,000 men being called up to staff the first echelon forces (8 March 1941). During
April-June, the second echelon was deployed and moved toward the Soviet Union’s
western borders. And, finally, on 1 June, a massive secret mobilization was initiated. By
22 June, the day that the Germans launched Operation Barbarossa, a full 85 percent of
Soviet forces were concentrated only 20-80 kilometers from the border. According to
452 “Zapiska Narkoma Oboroni SSSR I Nachal’nika Genshtaba Krasnoi Armii Predsedatelu SNK SSSR I.V. Stalinu s Soobrazheniyami po Planu Strategisheskovo prazwertuvaniya Vooruzhennykh Sil Sovetskovo Soyuza na Slychai Voiny s Germaniei I ee Soyuznikami,” in 1941-god, Vol.2, pp.215-220; quote on p.216. 453 Ibid., p.219.
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Mel’tiukhov, Soviet forces would have ready to launch a preemptive strike – “Operation
Storm” – by 15 July 1941.
Moreover, five secret high-level meetings were held at the Kremlin between 10-
24 May. Though nearly all evidence from these meetings remains classified, it is arguable
that the main item on the agenda was the upcoming preemptive strike. The meetings, for
example, were attended by all senior military planners as well as leading Party officials,
not to mention Stalin himself. Mel’tiukhov contends that it was at the 24 May meeting
that the original date for the attack – 12 June – was delayed because of a concern that the
defection of Rudolf Hess (10 May 1941) presaged a Nazi-British alliance against the
Soviet Union.
In addition, these troop deployments and secret meetings were held against a
backdrop of extensive ideological preparation. Martial propaganda was aimed
specifically at the military to solidify soldiers’ commitment to the regime and its values.
Measures included morale-boosting efforts that were meant to avoid desertion and foot-
dragging that plagued earlier campaigns in Poland and Finland.454 Pamphlets were also
printed to distribute to the newly “liberated” populations that Soviet forces were expected
to encounter in their drive to Eastern Prussia. And, in a 5 May 1941 speech that has
garnered substantial attention from historians, Stalin appealed to Red Army graduates to
adopt offensive ways of thinking.
In providing for the defense of our country, we must act in
an offensive way. Our military policy must change from defense to waging offensive actions. We must endow our indoctrination, our propaganda and agitation, and our press with an offensive spirit. The Red Army is a modern army – a modern army that is an offensive army.455
454 Interestingly, the German high command was also drawing up similar plans to launch an ideological campaign to justify its upcoming attack. See “Predlozheniya shtaba OKV po propagandistskoi podgotovke napadeniya na sovetskii soyuz,” in 1941-god, Vol.2, pp.177-78. 455 “Vystuplenie General’novo Cekretarya TsK VKP(b) I.V. Stalina pered Vypusknikami Voennykh Akademii RKKA v Kremle,” in 1941-god, Vol.2, pp.158-162.
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Perhaps the most revealing evidence of the closeness of a Soviet offensive lies in
actual Soviet deployment patterns. The bulk of Soviet forces, including its most advanced
aircraft and tanks, was forward deployed with scant defensive preparations on the
Western front. Staging areas and airfields were each constructed with the intent of
marshalling Soviet forces for a sudden and massive first-strike across a very narrow
salient. These forces were so narrowly concentrated in a narrow salient – a “sack,” in
military parlance – that they were dangerously exposed. Such a position would have been
untenable for any prolonged length of time, especially if battle-hardened Nazi forces
were nearby.456 This suggests that the Soviet offensive may have been as near as 15 July
(the date given by Mel’tiukhov) and as distant as early fall, when the weather makes
campaigning difficult.
As we know, however, the Nazi’s own postponed Operation Barbarossa was
launched before the intended Soviet attack. The Soviet’s own improvised response to the
Nazi attack gives even further evidence of the pathologies that now riddled Soviet
strategy. First, all units, regardless of their actual situation, were forbidden to retreat or
withdraw in any form. Capture by German forces was made a criminal offense that was
imposed on the soldier’s family as well. Second, Stalin ordered an immediate
counteroffensive against German forces even as these units were being overrun and
destroyed. “Using powerful bombers and frontier aviation,” he demanded on the morning
of 23 July 1941, “destroy the opponent’s aviation and special concentrations of his
ground forces.”457 That these units were already destroyed, or rendered incapable of
offensive operations, was either unknown or unimportant to Stalin and his regime.
456 Mel’tiukhov 2000: 301-36 and Roberts 1995: 1293-1326 457 Directive No.2. Quoted in Medvedev 2002: 123. Note, too, that the oft-repeated claim of Stalin’s incapacitation for weeks after the Nazi attack has turned out to be false. We now have access to Stalin’s Kremlin appointment book, which demonstrates that he was working nearly 18 hour days. See Medvedev 2002: 118-36. For the actual appointment book, see “Posetiteli Kremlevskovo kabineta I.V. Stalina,” Istoricheski arkhiv 1994-96).
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Much like Napoleon III’s ill-fated Prussian offensive, prudence should have
dictated that Soviet dictator allow his forces to fall back and regroup. Once again, the
demands of regime survival overrode more “realist” state security concerns, and Soviet
soldiers were thrown into fire as quickly as they could be mobilized. Even more
surprising, however, is the fact that some 630,000 Soviet soldiers actually defected to the
Nazi side. This is a clear sign of the failure of the Soviet leadership to persuade a core
audience of the “rightness” of its political vision. In short, the USSR suffered a near
disastrous defeat: some 815,000 soldiers, almost 12,000 tanks, and 4000 aircraft were lost
in the first two weeks of war because its strategic posture was dictated by regime survival,
not state security.458 Boxed in by its own rhetoric, and seeking the clear and decisive
victory that had eluded it in Finland, the regime staked all on a gamble that nearly
brought down the regime and state down together.
Yet what were Stalin’s war aims, if he had in fact managed to strike first? Much
debate still surround his war aims, a debate that will continue until full access is granted
to Russian archives. In one sense, the debate is peripheral to the argument presented here,
since it appears clear that (1) the regime’s choice set was narrowing over time (especially
1936-41) and (2) that Soviet strategy was becoming increasingly risk-acceptant. But the
motives behind the potential strike are central to the proposed argument. It matters, for
example, if the Soviet Union harbored expansionist ambitions or if it was merely
responding defensively to the rising Nazi threat.
Documentary evidence remains fragmented. We do know, however, that as early
as 19 August 1939, Stalin had publicly announced his intention to use the war between
the democracies and Germany as a tool for “sovietizing” Germany and France.459 The 15
May 1941 plan detailed above is also indicative of the fact that Stalin had ambitions
beyond Poland, extending to at least East Prussia, if not Germany as a whole. It appears
458 Mel’tiukhov 2000: 414, Table 63. See also Beshanov 2004: 169-202. 459“Stalin’s Speech to the Politburo (19 August 1939),” quoted in Weeks 2002: 171-73.
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that conquests such as Finland and Bessarabia served as “minimal” goals, with a
“middle” position represented by a Soviet Germany and a “maximal” position perhaps
being the sovietization of Europe itself.
There is no question that traditionalists and neorealists alike would find much to
disagree with in this identity-based account. Here I respond to several of their most
trenchant critiques. First, and perhaps most simply, these authors do not believe that
Stalin was planning a preemptive strike. The 15 May 1941 plan is often dismissed as
either a working plan not reflective of “real” Soviet intentions or that it was never even
seen by Stalin since his signature was absent from the plan. Stalin was therefore duped by
Hitler or, for various reasons, was unable to acknowledge the threatening storm brewing
on Soviet borders. The Nazi attack achieved complete surprise, for Stalin was seeking to
appease Germany until at least 1943, when war could be fought on more favorable
terms.460
These are important points, but they can be challenged. First, it is true that Stalin
did not affix his signature to the document. Nor had he done so for any military plan
since 1938. The absence of his signature does not mean he did not see it or agree with it;
the meetings that preceded and followed this plan are also highly suggestive of Stalin’s
direct participation in the formulation of such efforts. Similarly, the absence of a
“political decision” authorizing war does not mean that Stalin was avoiding war;
following standard operating procedures, Soviet units would have received their “go”
orders at the last minute and only after they had finished concentrating at their rally
points at the border. This pattern was followed, for example, in all preceding Soviet
military campaigns. And how else to explain the massive and, in June, secret
460 Note that not all historians agree that the USSR had aggressive intentions. The leading example of the neo-traditionalist school, Gorodetsky, argues that the USSR had only defensive military doctrines and benign intentions. This flies in the face of much historical research and conveniently overlooks Soviet policy toward Spain, Poland, Finland, and the Baltic states.
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mobilization that concentrated nearly all Soviet forces – including all of its best units and
equipment – in a dangerously exposed salient?
Yet critics still point out that even if Soviet military planners were contemplating
a strike, there was no way that Stalin would sign off on it because war games (1940-41)
and the invasion of Finland had demonstrated the weakened nature of the Red Army.461
This is debatable, however. Recent research has suggested that the purges did not
weaken, and in some ways strengthened, the Red Army.462 Moreover, it is unclear why
military unpreparedness would dissuade Stalin from embarking on a military campaign;
this was precisely the story of the previous Polish and Finnish campaigns, where
numerous flaws in the morale, equipment, training, and quality of Soviet soldiers and
their leadership were brutally exposed.
Perhaps most importantly, though, new archival evidence suggests we need to
reassess the claim that claim that Soviet forces were unprepared for combat.463
Substantial evidence suggests that the Red Army was in its best (relative) shape it had
ever been, thanks in no small measure to a massive rearmament campaign begun in 1939.
While existing accounts often stress Nazi superiority on the Eastern front, this was only
true in a limited, qualitative sense. The Soviet emphasis on a preemptive strike meant that
Soviet forces were simultaneously spread too thin (covering an area from Finland to
Romania) and too narrowly concentrated in a dangerous “sack.”464 As Table 4.3
observes, the Red Army enjoyed numerical superiority in both men and material on the
eve of Operation Barbarossa (or Operation Storm).
461 Orlov 2001. 462 Mlechin 2004: 128-194 and Mel’tiukhov 2000: 295-99. 463 Gerasimov 1999. 464 Note, too, that the “gamble for resurrection” logic also pertains to Nazi Germany; in fact, one could argue that Nazi Germany was farther along its respective entrapment curve than Soviet Union
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Table 4.4. A Comparison of Red Army and Wehrmacht Forces on the Eve of Battle (1941)
Materiel Red Army Wehrmacht Force Ratio Divisions 128 55 2.3:1 Personnel 3.4 million 1.4 million 2.1:1
Tanks 7500 900 8.7:1 Aircraft 6200 1400 4.4:1
Source: M.I. Mel’tiukhov, Upushchennyi shans Stalina (2000), p.407.
Despite general Soviet superiority, we should not conclude that a preemptive
strike was anything but risky. Indeed, critics have seized upon its high probability of
failure to argue that Stalin would never have ordered the strike. Marshal Zhukov himself
later admitted that he was relieved that a strike was never launched because it would have
resulted in disaster. Soviet planners had, in fact, misjudged the main Nazi axis of attack.
If Soviet forces had followed through with the intent of the plan – to drive a wedge
between Germany and her southern allies – they would have found themselves entrapped
between German Army Groups South and Center. Yet it is crucial to recognize the simple
but important point that Soviet planners did not (of course) know that they were going to
fail. We have seen many instances of regimes – Napoleon III’s France, Pakistan, the
Soviet Union itself – where less-than-fully prepared forces were sent into combat to
fulfill regime demands. When pressed, regimes will gamble rather than risking failure by
standing pat.
Perhaps the most important criticism comes from a realist perspective, namely,
that Stalin’s preemptive strike plans were simply a rational response to a worsening
security environment. The fact of a threatening Nazi buildup, and not changes in the
content and coherence of the Soviet identity project, drove Stalin to consider such a plan.
There are a number of reasons why this argument does not hold, however. First, and most
importantly, Soviet preparations took place without any reference to a potential German
attack because Soviet intelligence seriously misjudged German intentions. New archival
evidence suggests that Soviet agencies did a reasonably good job in assessing the strength
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of German forces on the eastern front. In fact, Soviet intelligence in general tended to
overestimate German strength by about 60 percent in the 1939-40 period, a margin of
error that was reduced to about 40 percent in 1941.465
Assumptions about German intentions, rather than capabilities, are what severe
the link between German actions and Soviet reactions. Soviet planners were guided by
the assumption that Germany would never fight another two-front war, and would
therefore wait until Britain was defeated before turning eastward. Any such German
offensive would therefore come in 1942 or 1943, giving the Soviet Union plenty of time
to complete its rearmament and to seize the strategic initiative. Second, and equally as
important, Soviet planners were guided by a belief that they possessed a mobilization
“cushion” of between 15 and 30 days. That is, they believed that German forces could not
mobilize all of their hitting power without warning, so that the first 15-30 days would be
occupied with skirmishing before each side could bring their main forces to bear on one
another. This seriously mistaken assumption led Stalin and company to disregard
substantial (and substantially accurate) warnings of a German strike against the Soviet
Union.
CONCLUSION
These two cases provide important evidence of the impact of identity on strategic
choice. Despite shared structural positions and common “shocks,” post-Napoleonic
France and the Soviet Union pursued sharply different strategies. This most similar
comparative design allows us to control for key variables – power differentials, offense-
defense balance, opportunity to expand – that are frequently cited in neorealist and
rationalist explanations of state behavior. Moreover, these cases provide us with a clear
negative case of a state that may have, but did not, become a revisionist by dint of its 465 See especially Mel’tiukhov 2000: 240-64. For examples of these reports, see Document No.327 in 1941-god, Vol.1, pp.776-81 and No.376 in 1941-god, Vol.2, pp.56-60.
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identity project. The Soviet case also neatly traces the evolution of a revisionist from an
initial “cautious” phase to a “gambling” actor as its identity project became increasingly
exclusive and fragmented. Continuities of identity project and strategy across multiple
regimes (in France) and leaders (in the Soviet Union) underscores the path dependent
properties of identity. Note, too, that shifts in identity – say, in the aftermath of the
Ukrainian crisis (1932-33) – often preceded changes in the external environment.
Alternatively, in the case of post-Napoleonic France, the content of the identity project
helped dictate perceptions of the need to pursue revisionism. France had the opportunity
and capacity, but no motive, for such ambitions.
The contention that exclusive and fragmented identities are more prone to
generate revisionist pressures (Proposition 1) is well-supported by the chapter’s evidence.
Postwar France was not democratic, nor were its political institutions especially
inclusive. Yet its inclusive identity project avoided the heady nationalism of Napoleon I
and worked to downplay, rather than stoke, grievances against the Concert of Europe and
France’s subordinate position. Hitching their fate to the dictates of the Concert,
successive French regimes eschewed scapegoating against external foes, though this
would ultimately prove a thin gruel on which to establish the regime’s legitimacy. By
contrast, Stalin witnessed (and actively encouraged) the growing exclusivity of a project
that once espoused more inclusive principles such as internationalism and a “flat” social
hierarchy. With the evolution of this project toward more exclusive, Russo-centric
language, the identity bundle began to fragment, creating competing public expectations
about the regime’s aims. The fragmentation of this project not only increased concerns
about regime safety by empowering domestic opposition but also made high-gain
strategies more attractive, despite their higher risk (Proposition 2).466
466 New evidence suggests that Stalin was so concerned about a coup against his regime that he was beginning to purge high-ranking military officers even as he planned his preemptive strike in May-June 1941. See Pleshakov 2005: 71-73.
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These cases of two large, recently defeated, land Powers also underscores the
importance of identity type vis-à-vis reigning understandings at the international level
(Proposition 3). France, its leadership clinging to international norms for legitimacy,
worked assiduously to close the gap between its legitimating ideas and those present in
international society. Perhaps the best example of this “closeness of fit” is the decision to
use French forces to police the (anti-French) postwar settlement in Spain. By contrast, the
Soviet Union was legitimated with principles antithetical to at least some of the principal
Powers (Britain, France, and an isolationist United States) as well as postwar institutions
like the League of Nations. Tactical adjustments in strategy – notably, brief support of a
collective security policy in the 1930s – only jibed uneasily with increasingly Russo-
centric and exclusionary principles at home. As these contradictions mounted – peaceful
coexistence? revolutionary communism? – the regime was forced to maneuver in a bid to
silence a growing chorus of questions from society. Ironically, in these cases the
revisionist path led to regime survival – though at tremendous cost and risk – while the
status quo path was insufficient to guarantee the stability of the Bourbon dynasty or
Louis-Philippe’s regime.
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5
On the Path to Ruin? Postcommunist Russia as a Potential Revisionist
One of the most pressing security concerns of the early 1990s was the possible
emergence of a revisionist Russia.467 This fear had largely subsided by the mid-1990s but
has now apparently returned, with crises in 2004 over Georgia, Ukraine, Abkhazia, along
with Vladimir Putin’s creeping authoritarianism, renewing concern over Russia’s foreign
policy ambitions. Earlier concerns about the possible rise of a “Weimar Russia” have, in
fact, been revived among some commentators in the form of a revanchist Russia pursuing
a more militaristic, if not imperialist, strategy.468 A leading group of 115 diplomats and
scholars, for example, posted an open letter in September 2004 to the heads of NATO
and the EU decrying the “deteriorating conduct” of Russia’s foreign policy. “President
Putin’s foreign policy,” they warned, “is increasingly marked by a threatening attitude
toward Russia’s neighbors and Europe’s energy security [and by] the return of rhetoric of
militarism and empire.”469
Postcommunist Russia’s trajectory is thus doubly confusing. On the one hand,
Russia defied earlier predictions of a return to neo-imperialist adventures. On the other
hand, Russian policy, often characterized as measured and pragmatic under Putin, is
evidently become more assertive despite more than a decade of closer ties with key
international institutions and actors. Indeed, Russia’s confusing posture has led
researchers to hedge their bets when assessing Russia’s strategic direction. Unfortunately, 467 The best overview of American security concerns is found in Goldgeier and McFaul 2003. Russia was also considered of major importance by the incoming Bush Administration. See Rice 2000. 468 On the prospects of a “Weimar Russia,” see Hanson and Kopstein 1997. For arguments emphasizing the likelihood of Russia’s return to, or continued practice of, “neo-imperialism,” see Bugajski 2004; Murawiec 2000; Dunlop 2000; Pipes 1996; Ra’anan and Martin 1996. For Russia as the “prodigal superpower,” see Rosefielde 2005. 469 “An Open Letter to the Heads of State and Government of the European Union and NATO,” The Moscow Times, 28 September 2004.
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characterizing Russia’s policies as some form of “soft balancing” sidesteps the question
of whether Russian strategy is motivated by a desire to purse revisionist ambitions, if
only in a regional setting, or to prevent any further erosion of its standing.470 What, then,
is driving Russian policy over the postcommunist era (1993-2004)?
Postcommunist Russia is also an important case because it allows us to examine
how once and future Great Powers adjust to their reduced status after a sharp collapse. An
analogous case here is France after its defeat in the Napoleonic Wars (see Chapter Four).
Moreover, while some scholars have written Russia off due to its economic and military
collapse, it nonetheless remains the strongest regional power, especially relative to its
immediate neighbors. And, finally, Russian strategy matters because it sets the
parameters for neighboring states’ policies and thus impacts their democratization and
state capacity. This is especially the case in Central Asia, a region rich not only in energy
resources but also in instability stemming from Islamic fundamentalism, uneasy ethnic
divisions, and the presence of terrorist networks. Russia need not restore its former Great
Power status or pursue full-scale revisionist ambitions to still have important regional, if
not global, consequences.
This chapter briefly sets the stage for the following two chapters, which examine
how the process of identity formation has influenced strategy in Yeltsin’s and Putin’s
Russia, respectively. In a bid to do some initial brush-clearing, this chapter advances
three claims. First, postcommunist Russia is, from the point of view of existing theories, a
most likely case for the emergence of revisionist behavior. The apparent absence of such
behavior, at least on a large-scale, therefore poses a puzzle for existing theories of state
behavior. Second, the chapter, like those that preceded it, focuses on making the case that
“weak” states still matter. In other words, despite Russia’s pronounced fall from the ranks
470 Wohlforth 2003. “Soft” balancing refers to efforts by a state to challenge the hegemon without use of traditional power politics practices such as external or internal balancing (i.e. rearmament). It refers instead to rhetorical protests and institutional politics that do not affect the overall balance of power.
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of the Great Powers (if temporary), its orientation and strategy remain consequential for
regional stability. And, finally, the chapter makes the case for approaching the question
of Russian identity, and its impact on strategy, in a different way than existing studies.
Ironically, while security studies in general remains largely indifferent to identity-based
approaches, the study of Russia has been dominated by them. Though I, too, adopt an
identity-centered explanation, I dissent from the near-consensus that Russian identity is
“in crisis” and thus too weak to have a discernible impact on Russian strategy.
SLEEPING DOG?
Though it is often difficult to discover the “dog that didn’t bark,” it is arguable
that many of our theories suggest that Russia had (and has) a high probability of chasing
revisionism. For example, Russia’s geographic position itself has been cited as creating
an inherent “bias toward expansion” that operates irrespective of leadership type.471
Russia is, after all, surrounded by weak neighbors that would seem to fuel the beliefs
about “easy conquest” that power neorealist understandings of why states initiate war. At
the very least, the regional balance of military power and technology continues to favor
Russia and thus could facilitate some form of neo-imperial dominance.472 Moreover,
Russia retains coercive instruments in the form of trade and energy dependencies, tools
that could provide the building blocks for a renewed hegemony. Moreover, the loss of
formal empire, coupled with the erosion of Great Power status, has also been cited as a
cause of past wars and renewals of empire-building efforts.473 Finally, we might
471 Wohlforth 2001: 213. See also LeDonne 1997: 1-22. 472 This combination of weak neighbors and the dominance of offensive weapons is, according to offense-defense theorists, an especially dangerous combination. See, for example, Adams 2003: 45-83 and Van Evera 1999: 117-92. 473 In the Russian context, see Tuminez 2000: 10-12.
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anticipate Russia’s pursuit of “reactive revisionism” in the face of successive rounds of
NATO expansion that have pushed NATO to the edge of Russia’s borders.
Domestic level factors also appear to push Russia in a revisionist direction. As
Edward Mansfield and Jack Snyder argue, states experiencing democratic transitions are
three times more likely to initiate war than their more stable counterparts.474 There is
little question that Russia’s hybrid political system meets these authors’ criteria of a
“stalled” transition. Even the question of whether Russia’s current political boundaries do
in fact encompass the Russian nation has yet to be settled.475 Two other preconditions for
revisionism – the rise of nationalism and a deepening social crises – are also present in
contemporary Russia. Indeed, the Duma elections of December 2003 witnessed the
stunning electoral success of political parties wielding nationalist slogans and the
corresponding decline (really, the collapse) of parties that declined to engage in such out-
bidding. Similarly, the collapse of Russia’s social safety, high level of inequality, and
widespread underemployment, can also conspire to create fertile soil for a nationalist
political program.
To be sure, postcommunist Russia has neither openly nor clandestinely
challenged American primacy of the global system. Yet enough worrisome trends remain
to concern scholars. William Wohlforth argues, for example, that Russia is now pursuing
a form of “soft balancing” that seeks to further its national interests without risking
incurring an open break with the hegemon. Others point to Russia’s economic and
security policies in Central Asia and the Transcaucasus as proof of revived imperial
ambitions. Russia’s military forces have been, and remain, active across the region,
including in Moldova, Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. Indeed,
the presence of Russian military bases in these states provides Russia with enormous
474 Mansfield and Snyder 2002: 326. In an earlier version of this argument, the authors cite Russia as a key example of democratization raising a state’s war-proneness. See Mansfield and Snyder 1995: 222, 249, 252-53. See also Kozhemiakin 1998: 35-70. 475 On the link between questions of stateness and nation-ness, see Linz and Stepan 1996: 16-37.
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leverage in their “internal” politics. As Nikolai Gvosdev argues, “if Russia does ‘get up’
in the next decade, any policy that assumes that Russia will accept a status quo in Eurasia
and the world predicated on Russian weakness is foolhardy and dangerous.”476
Worrisome trends also exist on the military side of the ledger. Russian leaders
have clearly not shied away from the use of military force against its own population over
the course of the two Chechen wars (1994-96, 1999-). As Sarah Mendelson notes, the
flagrant violations of human rights committed by Russian soldiers indicates that leaders
have yet to internalize international norms.477 In addition, successive military doctrines
(1993, 1997, 2000, 2003) have increasingly embraced the use of preemptive strikes while
lowering the threshold for the use of tactical nuclear weapons. Renewed emphasis has
also been placed on increasing military expenditures (see Table 5.1). Bolstered by
surging oil revenues, Russia is now financing the development of a fifth-generation
fighter aircraft, a new class of submarine, and is now deploying sophisticated
Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBM) designed to counter any future American
missile defense shield (the Topol-M).
476 Gvosdev 2004: 36. 477 Mendelson 2002: 39-69.
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Sources: World Bank, International Development Indicators; The SIPRI Yearbook, 2004.
Figure 5.1. Russian Annual Defense Expenditures, Adjusted for Purchasing Power Parity (PPP)478
Russia’s military also remains the least restructured bureaucracy in the post-
Soviet state.479 And the influence of those with backgrounds in the so-called power
ministries – the military, Interior Ministry, and the intelligence services – has only
increased over time. Indeed, these siloviki now hold some 30 percent of positions in the
executive branch, with a remarkable 58.3 percent of Putin’s inner circle now being drawn
from these ranks.480 In turn, the informal influence of these actors means that we cannot
easily dismiss some of the more fanciful (and alarming) musing of this new class. To take
one example: the Council for Defense and Foreign Policy, an influential and Kremlin-tied
478 Russian defense expenditures are consistently understated because analysts do not adjust for sharp purchasing power parity differences. An international dollar has the same purchasing power over GDP as the U.S. dollar has in the United States. Moreover, total outlays for defense also do not typically take into account either the war in Chechnya or Russia’s vast domestic security agencies. 479 Golts and Putnam 2004: 121-58 and Golts 2004: 176-203. 480 Kryshtanovskaya and White 2003: 294-95. See also “V Rossii skolachivaetsia vlastnaia piramida sovetskovo tipa [A Soviet-Style Power Pyramid is Being Stitched Together in Russia],” Nezavisimaia gazeta, 31 August 2004.
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l $)
244
think-tank, has now begun advocating the adoption of post-World War One Germany as
the model for army reform. In one report, the Council argues that the creation of a
nucleus of well-trained officers would allow for the rapid reconstitution of Russian
military strength.481 More anecdotally, the nature of best-selling books among the officer
corps is alarming. Works casting the current international situation as one of “World War
Three” – and, in some cases, World War Four – between the United States and Russia
have proven enormously popular, though their influence is difficult to track directly.482
The news, however, is not all alarming. As Table 5.2 demonstrates, Russia
remains one of the most densely integrated countries in the world, if measured by
participation in international and regional organizations. Surging economic performance,
along with anticipated membership in the World Trade Organization by 2006, may also
dampen revisionist tendencies out of fear of severing trade interdependencies. Russia’s
relations with NATO, though frequently stormy, have nonetheless been institutionalized
in the form of the Russia-NATO Founding Act (1997) and now the Russia-NATO
Council (2002?). In the aftermath of 11 September, Putin moved quickly to pledge his
support for both a broad counter-terrorism coalition and for American actions in Central
Asia. Even Russia’s opposition to the American invasion of Iraq in March 2003 proved
muted. In short, there appear to be countervailing forces that have dissuaded Russia’s
leadership from actively pursuing counterbalancing against American primacy. 481 “Oboronnaia Politika Rossii [Russia’s Defense Policy],” Council for Foreign and Defense Policies (SVOP), 14 October 2003. Available at: http://www.svop.ru/live/materials.asp?m_id=7271. References to postwar Germany were downplayed in the subsequent report, “Voennoe stroitel’stvo i modernizatsiia vooruzhennykh sil Rossii [Military organization and modernization of Russia’s armed forces],” available at: http://www.svop.ru/live/materials.asp?m_id=9719. In this report, Japan’s Self-Defense Force is considered an apt model, a less threatening vision until we consider that many Russian military observers believe that Japan itself harbors “breakout” desires. 482 Important examples include: Kalashnikov and Krupnov 2003; Panarin 1999; and Dugin 2000. Gnev Orka: Amerika Protiv Rossii [Anger of the Orc: America Against Russia], written by Kalashnikov and Krupnov, had a print-run of 50,000 copies, an extraordinarily amount for a work of non-fiction in Russia.
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Source: Yearbook of International Organizations, 38th Edition (Brussels: Union of International Associations, 2000-2001), pp.1467-70.
Figure 5.2. Russia’s Comparative Institutional Membership, 1966-2000.
Critics might point out, however, that there is a much simpler explanation for the
absence of Russian revisionism: Russia is simply too weak to pursue such ambitions. A
recent spate of books on American grand strategy have, for example, largely demoted
Russia to a marginal position in world affairs.483 Moreover, neorealists are quick to point
to the overwhelming nature of American primacy, which makes balancing a costly
483 For recent views of American grand strategy that largely minimize the challenges posed by a weak Russia, see Art 2003: 13-14, 242-43; Brzezinski 2004: 100-03; Dueck 2004: 197-216. American military planners, by contrast, began the 1990s preparing for the possibility of a revisionist Russia, only to overturn that view once Russian weakness became apparent. By 2004, however, Russia had once again emerged as a (unnamed) threat. No longer a peer competitor, Russia still possesses “disruptive” capabilities that could threaten US interests and security. See “A Framework for Strategic Thinking,” a classified 19 August 2004 briefing to the Senior Level Review Group, Department of Defense. Available at: http://www.fas.org/irp/agency/dod/framework.pdf
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
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90
1966 1977 1986 1997 2000
USSR/RussiaPolandChinaUnited StatesNorth Korea
246
proposition even for a coalition of anti-American forces. Indeed, any efforts to balance
the United States are costly because they are subject to collective action problems.
Would-be revisionists are, for example, more likely to try to pass the costs of revisionism
off onto other states (“buck-passing”), a strategy that ultimately undermines any
collective resistance. These structural constraints are thought to be particularly pressing
for Russia, where material weakness has served to crop severely the range of options
available to the Russian leadership.484 Wohlforth and Stephen Brooks in fact argue that
structural pressures were so severe during Mikhail Gorbachev’s tenure that ideational
factors could play only a marginal role in shaping policy directions. If that were true of
Gorbachev’s Soviet Union, then such pressures must be even more constraining on
present-day Russia.485
Yet this “all or nothing” view of challenge under conditions of primacy
(hierarchy) is a misleading one. As earlier chapters of this dissertation have argued, there
is no question that weaker states can have a profound impact on regional order and even
the durability of a hegemon’s primacy. Russia could, in other words, “cause problems
without catching up”486 – or, indeed, even frustrate or otherwise subvert American
diplomacy through the careful management of existing assets. Nor does a potential
challenger need to have sufficient resources to force a return to “multipolarity,” which is
usually the benchmark for systemic change adopted by neorealism. Instead, it is plausible
that a range of strategies are still available to Russia for contesting American policies that
fall far short of open conflict.
The reintegration of part or all of the Soviet Empire (“Russia-plus”) though either
economic coercion or incentives could be one viable strategy. Similarly, overt or covert
interference into the affairs of neighboring states in an effort to retain a sphere of
484 Wohlforth 2002: 100-06. 485 Brooks and Wohlforth 2002: 93-111. 486 See Christensen 2001: 5-40.
247
influence could also be available. Russia could, and in the eyes of some, has, formed
competing security organizations and nascent blocs in Central Asia and with China to
balance against the United States. Interference in the form of “counter-terrorist”
operations – i.e. in Georgia – could also be used to infringe on neighboring states’
sovereignty. Russia could rearm, internally balancing against NATO, the United States,
or China. And Russia could simply “balk”487 and pursue determined non-alignment with
the United States. In short, Russia retains the capacity to challenge the United States and
other states on a regional basis; these challenges may in turn have systemic
consequences. What remains to be seen, however, is whether Russia’s leadership harbors
such ambitions.
RUSSIAN IDENTITY AND STRATEGY
Nothing in the foregoing discussion presupposes that postcommunist Russia is a
revisionist, only that it remains a possible outcome. The fact that scholars can find
evidence for both revisionist and cooperative policies points to a need to examine the
sources behind this behavior. Interestingly, unlike the broader international relations
literature, most students of Russia have ascribed this policy confusion to the uncertain
nature of Russia’s identity. Moreover, nearly all of these identity-based studies share the
same premise: namely, that Russian identity remains “in crisis.” Echoing Ernst Gellner’s
“vacuum thesis”488 of nationalism, these scholars have suggested competing national
visions are jostling to fill the vacuum created by the collapse of communist ideology.
Substantial effort has therefore been placed on constructing typologies of national
ideology that span the alternatives on offer in the marketplace of ideas.489
487 Brown 2003: 75. 488 Gellner 1992: 243-54. 489 Billington 2004; Lo 2002: 12-39; Ponarin 1999; Tuminez 2001; Trenin 2002: 9-19; Kassianova 2001: 821-39; Sperling 2003: 235-53; Ivanov 2001: 7-13; Tolz 1998: 267-94; Urban
248
Curiously, this emphasis on identity’s centrality has led most, though not all,
scholars to both privilege and dismiss identity as a causal variable. Indeed, because
identity is viewed as “in crisis,” it is deemed too unstable to guide the formation of a
consistent foreign policy. Or, to put it differently, what lies at the end of Russia’s “search
for identity” is a recognizable grand strategy that accurately reflects the new national
consensus – whatever that may be in practice.
Missing from this account, however, is recognition of the fact that the existence of
multiple identities does not represent evidence of a “crisis.” Rather than trying to classify
Russian identity as a type – be it liberal, nationalist, etc. – it is more profitable to examine
the type and salience of these different markers over time. Using the presence of multiple
identities as evidence of a crisis therefore overlooks the possibility that Russian identity
has reached an “equilibrium” in which these different strands are arrayed in a consistent
and persistent bundle. This opens the possibility that Russian identity – or, at least, the
each regime’s official project – may be composed of contradictory markers.
As a result, the apparent inconsistencies in Russian strategy may not be a
reflection of an identity in crisis but rather that the regime’s legitimating bundle contains
contradictory strands that pull its policy in different directions. Episodic crises and a
“sub-optimal” strategy may be the price the regime pays for anchoring itself in a set of
identity strands that generate conflicting expectations.
The next two chapters take up the challenge of linking Russia’s official identity
project to the nature of its grand strategy during the Boris Yeltsin (1993-1999) and
Vladimir Putin (1999-2004) eras. Each chapter consists of three sections. The first section
examines the content, consistency, and coherence of the official identity project under
these two leaders. To assess the relative salience of different markers in the identity
bundle’s hierarchy, I use content analysis software that is capable of tracking changes
1998: 969-92; Gvosdev 2000: 29-38; Elizarova 2002: 92-110. Hopf 2002 is an important exception that does not treat Russian identity as being “in crisis.”
249
across time. A random sample of 1096 speeches, press conferences, and statements by the
Presidential Administration and the Foreign Ministry was selected to provide evidence of
the project’s content.490 We are interested here not only in the content of the project but
also whether either administration has relied on grievances and scapegoating as a means
of fostering a greater sense of collectivity. Such measures can alert us to potential
flashpoints and sensitivities of a regime prior to such discontent emerging as revisionist
policies.
The second section of each chapter inverts the preceding analysis and examines
how this official project is received by actors within society. This “bottom-up”
perspective aims to capture the “returns” that a project is accruing as well as the possible
counter-mobilization that is taking place.
To facilitate the comparison across leaders, each section details how resistance
has formed and mobilized in opposition to the Chechen War(s), which is a shared feature
of the Yeltsin-Putin project. This “bottom-up” perspective enables us to test the
microfoundations of the entrapment mechanism at a closer level than we can in the
historical cases. Indeed, I make use not only of event data but also primary materials
from different antiwar groups; in the case of Putin, I supplement this data with interviews
and participant observation of various anti-Chechen War protest groups. This section also
examines the extent to which each administration has worked to insulate itself from
societal pressures and “shocks.”
Finally, each chapter analyzes the evolution of Russian strategy by using a dataset
of daily foreign policy actions (January 1992 to May 2003). Consisting of thousands of
observations, these data enable us to paint a more accurate picture of Russia’s orientation
toward to present status quo. Indeed, these observations are coded along a 24-point scale
490 The sample was compiled by randomly selecting two speeches a week (one from the Presidential Administration, one from the Foreign Ministry) for every week of the year, January 1993 to May 2004. This yields a sample of 1096 documents. To be included, a document had to exceed 250 words. See Appendix 1 for greater detail.
250
of actions that range from highly pro-status quo – seeking deeper integration in
international organizations, for example – to the highly revisionist, including the use of
military force. This scale also helps address the question of mixed strategies in two ways:
(1) it permits a calculation of the overall orientation of the strategy and the intensity of its
pro- or anti-status quo acts and (2) we can isolate the number and type of revisionist acts
to determine in which areas Russian policy is revisionist. To complete the analysis, each
chapter examines a major crisis – NATO’s intervention in Kosovo (1999) and the
stationing of American forces in Central Asia after 11 September 2001 – to examine how
external events have impacted Russian identity. These cases close the circle by
demonstrating how “shocks” from abroad can have an equally profound impact on a
regime’s identity project as internal dissent.
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6
The Once and Future Great Power: Identity and Strategy in Yeltsin’s Russia,
1993-1999
You may build a throne out of bayonets, but you cannot sit on it for long.491
A persistent question in the study of postcommunist Russia’s evolution has been
the issue of whether the new regime could institutionalize itself as the legitimate
successor to Soviet authority. Most dramatically, on two occasions – once in December
1991, and again in October 1993 – military force was wielded to recast Russia’s nascent
political institutions. Subsequent developments, notably a near decision by President
Boris Yeltsin to postpone the 1996 elections, along with the continued presence of small
but vocal anti-system parties, underscored the fragility of the new regime as it emerged
from the ruins of the Soviet Union.492 That these developments took place amidst the
backdrop of massive economic upheaval and lingering questions about the boundaries of
nation and state only magnifies the challenge the Yeltsin regime faced. Given the
tremendous uncertainty that characterized the postcommunist transition, it is unsurprising
that most scholars have tended to focus on the short-term horizons and tactical
skirmishing of elites.493 This is especially the case in the study of Russian identity, where
a consensus has developed around the view that Russian identity is undergoing a “crisis”
that has rendered Russian foreign policy erratic, if not dysfunctional, in nature.
This chapter argues differently. Our concern with the uncertainty of Russia’s
transition in the 1993-1999 era has obscured the fact that a stable conception of Russian
491 Boris Yeltsin (by way of William R. Inge), “K soldatam i ofitseram Vooruzhyonnukh Sil SSR, KGB SSSR, MVD SSSR [To the Soldiers and Officers of the Armed Forces, the KGB, and Interior Ministry],” 19 August 1991. 492 Excellent overviews of this era can be found in McFaul 2001; Colton 2000; Shevtsova 1999. 493 On the importance of transitional uncertainty, see Bunce 2003: 167-73 and Bunce and Csanadi 1993. On the importance of incorporating mass-level politics, see Bermeo 2003: 7-20.
252
identity had emerged by late 1996 in the regime’s official rhetoric. Indeed, a broadly
inclusive, if somewhat fragmented, identity project informed the basis of the regime’s
legitimacy. A persistent commitment to both civic and statist language was clearly
evident across this time period, identity types that are much more inclusive than other
potential bases for allegiance. More exclusive markers, notably ethnic Russian
nationalism and appeals to Orthodoxy, remained marginal in the hierarchy of official
identity in both an absolute and a relative sense. This is not say, however, that exclusive-
type language was entirely absent. Over time, for example, mobilizing rhetoric against
the threat posed by NATO expansion surged, and an up-tick in protests lodged against the
fact of American unipolarity was also recorded.
Though broadly inclusive and persistent, the Yeltsin regime’s identity project
nonetheless rested on a set of stable contradictions. Put differently, the identity bundle
was partially fragmented, as its main statist and civic identities often created different
popular expectations about the regime’s appropriate direction. In turn, these
contradictions increased the regime’s sensitivity to perceived slights from abroad and
vulnerability to pressures from below. More specifically, while civic and statist language
espoused a common set of grievances and strategies, they also differed quite sharply
across different issues (say, for example, the Russian diaspora in neighboring states).
As detailed below, these contradictions would make themselves felt in the
persistent, and slowly increasing, presence of revisionist behavior in Russian policy
during the Yeltsin era. Cast in the terms set out by Figure 2.1, postcommunist Russia
under Yeltsin would be a mostly status quo actor on the basis of its broadly inclusive but
fragmented project. By the end of Yeltsin’s tenure, however, civic markers had begun to
decline, anti-NATO grievances had become a permanent feature of the ideational
landscape, and ethnic nationalism was beginning to march. This increase in the exclusive
nature of the identity project would subsequently be matched with heightened levels of
revisionism, even if Russia’s grand strategy remained broadly pro-status quo.
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This chapter begins by measuring the identity architecture of the Yeltsin regime
using both quantitative and qualitative content analysis. The use of computer-assisted
content analysis (CATA) enables us to examine the persistence of various strands of the
regime’s identity bundle in much greater detail than possible with the preceding historical
cases. It then draws on primary documents and polling data to record the public’s
reception of the Yeltsin project. Counter-mobilization against the regime during the
disastrous Chechen War is also explored in detail. The chapter then concludes with a
discussion of how the interplay between collective identity and society (both international
and domestic) shaped Russian strategy over time. The chapter draws on event data to
place Russian policy in comparative perspective and on a short case study to trace a key
instance of entrapment during the crisis over Kosovo. In brief, this chapter details how
the Yeltsin regime struggled to attain legitimacy in the eyes of its citizens and the broader
international community.
I. THE EVOLUTION OF YELTSIN'S IDENTITY PROJECT, 1993-1999
Did the regime actually have a consistent identity project, or did it simply tack
with the political winds? To answer this question, we must first identify relevant
materials and then draw a random sample. Here I examine the rhetoric of two key
government agencies – the Presidential Administration and the Ministry of Foreign
Affairs – that are tasked with a central role in identity construction. These agencies not
only construct and maintain the official version of Russian identity at home and abroad,
however. Since these agencies command significant material resources, they also
reintroduce the role of power back into our accounts of identity. The sample frame
consists of one official speech or press conference per week per institution for each week
254
of the year (N=672).494 I then use quantitative content analysis to track specific aspects of
the identity project, including its content, the type of grievances expressed, the presence
of scapegoating language, and the strength of association between these categories. These
categories have been drawn inductively from a prior sample of documents that range
from official texts and editorials to party platforms, films, novels, and even slogans
emblazoned on plakaty at protest rallies. Each category therefore consists of “tokens” –
that is, phrases or words – that are exclusive to each category. For more detail on the
construction of this category system, see Appendix One.
The central assumption here is that a collective identity cannot be classified as
“nationalist” or “democratic.” These categories are much too broad and have the effect of
reducing variation in the identity by effectively ignoring the other identities that an actor
also holds. Instead, we need to recast our notions of identity to allow for the possibility
that multiple identities are present at the same time in the regime’s project. Rather than
label a particular project an “X” or “Y” type project, we need to pull the cover back to
examine the salience of particular identity types (“markers”) within the identity bundle.
Salience here is measured by frequency of occurrence of a particular identity in a
standardized unit of text. Persistence, by contrast, is measured by the position of a
particular identity in a given hierarchy over time. Repetition of a certain set of identities
is therefore crucial for creating socialization pressures in a population over time. Relative
salience within a hierarchy also matters, for the more dominant a particular marker is
within a hierarchy, the more sensitive the regime is to any challenges that might undercut
its prior rhetorical stance on an issue.495
494 All documents are in Russian. 495 Contestation of identity could be measured by examining the distance between how a phrase, symbol, or event is used by different political camps. “Intensity,” by contrast, is a measure of the vitriol or feeling attached to particular identity or grievance. This is exceptionally hard to measure (to date) within an automated coding system, so I rely on a more qualitative approach. See Abdelal, Herrera, Johnston, McDermott 2003 for a discussion of these issues.
255
To measure the content of the Yeltsin regime’s project, I constructed six
categories for possible identity types. The civic category describes terms or phrases
associated with a notion of identity centered around democratic and civic conceptions of
citizenship, including equality of citizens and the desirability of a law-governed state.
The ultimate repository of legitimacy in this category is identified as the citizens of a
state rather than on ethnic or religious criteria. A statist identity, by contrast, is found in
statements that express pride in a country, a government, and/or its actions. These
statements may refer to a state’s international image (“Great Power”), the symbols of the
state (i.e. a flag), or the attributes that describe the state (strong, effective). Here, the
state, rather than the individual or the nation, is viewed as the focus of an individual’s
allegiance. A nationalist identity is found in statements that describe “Russian-ness” as
ethnic in content. Reference may be made to attributes such as a shared ethnicity, kinship,
history, or religion (or all of these attributes). Statements may also refer to the organic
nature of the political community and may call for the state to reflect the values and
boundaries of the nation (not vice versa).
A Eurasian identity is expressed in positive references to Eurasian values as the
basis of shared community. References may include allusions to Russia’s Eurasian
heritage, its unique role as a bridge between East and West, or to civilizational divisions
between West (Atlanticism) and East (Eurasian). In addition, reference may also be made
to the conception of Russia as an empire or as a spatial entity of enormous size.496 Soviet
refers to positive references to the Soviet past as the basis for a shared identity. Reference
may be made to desirable Soviet attributes, to past successes, or to the need to return to a
Soviet-style politico-economic system. And, finally, Orthodox refers to positive
statements about the role of Orthodox Christianity in providing the basis for a shared
496 The classic reference here is Dugin 2000.
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identity. References may include appeals to Church teachings, symbols, and/or the
historical role of the Church in guiding society. (See Appendix One for coding rules).
Figure 6.1. Relative Salience of Identity Categories in Official Rhetoric, 1993-1999.
Figure 6.1 presents the results of this initial cut at Russian identity, with
frequency represented as rate of occurrence per standardized unit of text (1000 words) in
six month intervals. These six markers are clearly arranged in a hierarchy of salience, one
that is dominated by civic and statist markers, followed by a “second tier” of Eurasian,
nationalist, and Soviet markers. Orthodoxy constitutes a “third tier,” one that is rarely
invoked in public rhetoric by the Yeltsin regime. Moreover, the frequency of identity
categories in the second and third tier is remarkably consistent, with only marginal shifts
in the relative salience. Perhaps most importantly, there is a clear “dip” in the position of
0
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
Jan-June1993
July-Dec1993
Jan-June1994
July-Dec1994
Jan-June1995
July-Dec1995
Jan-June1996
July-Dec1996
Jan-June1997
July-Dec1997
Jan-June1998
July-Dec1998
Jan-June1999
July-Dec1999
Freq
uenc
y
Civic Statist Nationalist Eurasian Soviet Orthodox
257
civic and statist markers in the July-December 1996 period; a more fine-grained analysis
at the monthly level reveals that this “dip” occurred in October 1996. From this period
on, civic markers rarely, if ever, outweigh monthly statist totals, and only in July-
December period was there enough civic markers to inch ahead of statist totals (see Table
6.1).
258
Table 6.1 Standardized Frequency of Identity Categories in Official Rhetoric,
January 1993 to December 1999 (per 1000 words)
Identity Types Jan-June 1993
July-Dec 1993
Jan-June 1994
July-Dec 1994
Jan-June 1995
July-Dec 1995
N
Civic 3.08 6.46 4.29 4.73 5.15 4.72 5207 Statist 2.70 5.38 4.69 5.61 5.51 4.53 5287
Nationalist .71 1.79 1.39 1.23 1.23 1.17 1442 Eurasian .46 1.40 .79 .99 .85 .97 1279
Soviet .74 1.43 1.26 1.15 1.50 1.07 1708 Orthodox .28 .24 .21 .11 .27 .21 305
Table 6.1, continued. Standardized Frequency of Identity Categories in Official Rhetoric, January 1993 to December 1999 (per 1000 words)
Identity Types Jan-June
1996 July-Dec
1996 Jan-June
1997 July-Dec
1997 Jan-June
1998 July-Dec
1998 Jan-June
1999 July-Dec
1999 N
Civic 5.64 4.16 4.36 4.1 4.61 4.67 2.91 4.55 4392Statist 5.66 4.90 5.24 4.95 4.94 5.92 3.96 4.98 5055
Nationalist 1.27 1.12 1.27 1.43 1.12 1.18 .89 1.22 1183Eurasian 1.02 .9 1.07 .72 1 .97 1.04 1.14 1085
Soviet 1.31 1 1.18 1.37 1.15 1.09 .61 .93 1145Orthodox .26 .08 .09 .19 .22 .06 .19 .20 157
259
Why this dip? This most likely represents a case of Yeltsin, now fading, and
his regime making post-electoral adjustments to reflect information gleaned from
the 1996 electoral campaign. The close-run election, in which Yeltsin faced serious
challenge from the Communist Party and by the highly popular General Lebed, may
have convinced Yeltsin of the need to retool his message in line with popular
demands for order and stability.497 Yeltsin may have concluded that his emphasis on
civic markers was not being received as well by the public as more statist language,
with its emphasis on Russia as a Great Power and an concern with the effectiveness
of state. This may be a story of identity “learning” or fine-tuning, with civic markers
downgraded but not removed from the hierarchy of markers (“identity death”).
Notably, this relative shift to statist language preceded the expansion of NATO
(July 1997) to include Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic and occurred
despite the formation of the NATO-Russia Council in May 1997.498
Given the apparent stability of these markers, there is little evidence of a
“crisis” in Russian identity. To be sure, there are multiple identity markers present,
though such evidence should not be as a “crisis” since it is unlikely that any identity
is ever so dominant that no other markers are present. it should also be noted that
Russian nationalism remained weak throughout this period. That is, despite much
commentary on the rise of a more hardline Yevgenii Primakov to the post of
Foreign Minister (and then Prime Minister) and the “nationalist” turn in Russian
politics, we see only a modest role for nationalism. To be sure, there is an apparent
surge in nationalist indicators – 100 percent increase is recorded between 1996 and
1997 – but such indicators are still infrequent compared to statist and civic
indicators. It may well be that our attention is seized by the evocative language of
497 Colton 2000: 187-96. 498 Baranovsky 2003: 269-294; Asmus 2002:175-203; Black 2000: 7-28.
260
wounded nationalism that is, in reality, relatively rare, while the dominance of
seemingly more mundane civic language is overlooked.499
Problems could arise, however, if the dominant markers within this identity
bundle generate contradictory expectations for regime behavior among key
audiences. The time series data provided above is useful for drawing trends but is
less suited to unpacking the leading categories. This is a necessary task if we are to
determine whether the content of each category is complementary or competing
with other leading categories. Here I unpack the civic and statist identity categories
by conducting a cluster analysis (a correlational model) of the eight dominant
attributes or role positions identified with each category.500 These results are
presented in Table 6.2.
Table 6.2 Type and Frequency of Key Attributes for Dominant Identities, 1993-1999
Civic Statist
Attribute Frequency Attribute Frequency Citizen (Civic) 2474 Developed 1832 Law-Based 2152 Maintain Security 1145 Normal 822 Consolidation 1113 Democratic 677 Strength 841 Freedom 638 Effectiveness 767 Western 557 Order 608 Human Rights 403 Unity 491 Exchange of Opinion
378 Power (derzhava) 254
499 These markers may vary sharply in their emotional resonance across and within specific audiences. A nationalist statement may carry more “weight,” for example, than a statist or civic marker, even if invoked less. Different methods, notably focus groups or CATA of different types of texts (such as diaries), may be able to assess the emotional connection across these markers at a closer range than the CATA conducted here. 500 This multi-stage content analysis combines the best of a CATA approach with the nuance provided by a human interpreter. It should be noted that content analysis literature often regards a category system (the substitution model) and cluster analysis (correlational model) as “incommensurable.” See Hogenraad, McKenzie, and Péladeau 2003: 224.
261
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the dominant attributes within the civic category
cluster around notions of “citizen” and “democracy.” There is a pronounced
emphasis not just on democracy as a type but also to several of its key
characteristics, including laws, freedom, human rights, and the exchange of opinion.
А typical statement from the early Yeltsin period is provided by Yeltsin himself:
“Stability and order require more than a President. They also require you – the
voter. And this is a fair demand. Otherwise we cannot make our state strong,
democratic, and prosperous, nor our people free…All will be decided by you with
your votes.”501
Identities are inherently relational, however, and so it is fitting to discover
that a number of attributes take their meaning only in relation to the outside world.
Here we can include not only “Western” but also “normal” and perhaps
“democratic” as well. Inherent in this category is a notion of in-group membership,
with identification linked not just to a broad conception of international society with
rules for inclusion (that Russia obviously meets) but also to a more select “Western”
club within that society.502
Statist markers, by contrast, revolve around the state, not the citizen, as the
repository of political allegiance. We therefore observe a sharply different pattern of
attributes and roles within the statist category. Most notably, we witness a heavy
emphasis on the creation of “order” and “unity” and the maintenance of strength and
security. There are also performance-based criteria present in this category, with a
501 President Boris Yeltsin, “Speech to the Opening Session of the People’s Deputies,” 11 March 1993. See also Director of the MFA Department of Information and Press Grigorii Karasin, Press Briefing, MFA Press Center, 6 December 1994 and Grigorii Karasin, Press Briefing, MFA Press Center, 21 November 1995. 502 Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Panov, Press Conference, MFA Press Center, 19 April 1994; Foreign Minister Andrei Kozyrev, Presentation of the Document “On the International Position of Russia,” to the State Duma Committee for International Affairs, 26 January 1995; Foreign Minister Andrei Kozyrev, Press Conference, Presidential Administration Press Center, 15 September 1995.
262
surprising emphasis on economic development and, less surprisingly, Russia’s
Great Power status.503
Most of these statist markers appear inward-oriented and reflect the
relationship between state and society. Nonetheless, the notion of a Great Power
role is inherently an external concept, and one that has the clear potential for
conflicting with civic notions of Russia as a “normal state.” It is, of course, possible
that these two sets of markers can coexist peacefully in the idea of a “normal Great
Power.” Yet this combination of role and attribute is almost nonexistent in these
texts.504 It is easy to surmise why, since a Great Power by definition implies that the
state enjoys a dominant role in the hierarchy of world politics. Normal states, by
contrast, enjoy equal status within international society but do not exercise any
special prerogatives. Whether Russia can be in both clubs at once is a key tension in
official rhetoric that I explore below.
First, however, we need to explore another core aspect of a regime’s project:
how it publicly casts the nature of the eternal world. In particular, we are interested
in determining how the Yeltsin regime characterized the culture of the international
system that Russia finds itself in (and perhaps seeking to join). Here I construct
measures for four different cultures or, in the language of strategic choice theory,
“games” that could inform the logic of interstate relations.505
503 See for example, President Boris Yeltsin, “Press Conference with the Leaders of the CIS About the Results of the Moscow Meetings,” 14 May 1993; President Boris Yeltsin, “Annual Address Before the Members of the Federation Council,” the Kremlin, 6 March 1997; Prime Minister Evgenii Primakov, “Speech to the Chairmen of Local Executive Organs of Local Autonomy,” RF Government House, 2 October 1998; Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, “Speech Before State Duma Deputies,” 16 August 1999. 504 Foreign Minister Andrei Kozyrev, Press Conference, MFA Press Center, 10 December 1993. 505 More specifically, I am interested in capturing the content of the “common knowledge space” that informs each game. On different systemic logics, see Wendt 1999: 246-312 and Luard 1987: 133-84. For an enlightening treatment of different games, see Kaminski 2004: 183-90.
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Harmony describes a situation in which state behavior is governed by a
shared sense of community and normative standards that proscribe certain
behaviors. Violence against members of the group is not only prohibited but the
taboo is so deeply engrained that such methods are never even considered as tools
for dispute resolution. Similarly, notions of sacrifice in behalf of the group are also
present. And, following Wendt, the dominant role position among in-group
members is that of a “friend” rather than “rival” or “enemy.”506
A Stag Hunt culture is marked by coordination of action around the pursuit
of a mutually profitable or important goal. Actors within such a culture are likely to
reference a shared struggle as well as the means for achieving that end (such as
multilateralism). In this cultural context, actors do accept the existing status quo,
though some disagreement with certain aspects may be present. It is not necessary,
however, for actors to believe that they are members of a shared international
society or civilization in order for cooperation to take place. Unlike a Harmony
culture, the conditions governing the use of violence are more permissive, with
military force being viewed as “normal” under certain circumstances.507
In turn, a Prisoners’ Dilemma culture is characterized by a zero-sum logic in
which states are driven by interest-maximizing calculations. The tenets of
realpolitik are dominant here, as states maneuver to ensure their security in a close
approximation of a defensive realist world.508 Violence is therefore an accepted, if
not prominent, feature of the landscape; this violence may be bounded by a sense of
restraint, though such normative concerns are readily abandoned if required.
Cooperation and coordination of action should be seen as difficult, if not dangerous,
506 Wendt 1999: 299-307. 507 Wendt 1999: 278-93. Following Wendt’s logic, the dominant role position here would be “colleague.” This preserves the clear distinction in Russian between friend (drug) and acquaintance (znakomstvo). 508 See, for example, Taliaferro 2000/2001: 152-86.
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since no central authority is present to enforce contracts among parties. States here
are “rivals,” not “friends” or “colleagues.”
Finally, a Deadlock culture depicts the state of world affairs as dominated by
concerns about relative military strength and sheer survival. Harsh enemy images
and a fear of suffering at the hands of enemies are usually common. The belief that
there are few, if any, limits on the use of military force is common, forcing states to
have short-term horizons and to seek opportunities to expand their control over
neighbors. Enmity, then, is the defining feature of the international system. This
stark view comes closest to representing an offensive neorealist conception of world
politics.509 The coding procedures for each of these “games” is provided in
Appendix One.
Why this emphasis on the “games” of world politics? This measure provides
a window into key aspects of the Yeltsin regime’s identity project. It taps, for
example, how the regime is depicting the quality of relations between states at the
international level. In particular, it allows us to examine whether the regime is
positioning itself rhetorically against a dark and foreboding international scene as a
way of rallying collective sentiment at home. Changes in the frequency of these
measures across time, or in their relative salience, can provide information about
whether a regime is internalizing a more or less conflictual conception of world
politics. The implication here is that if, say, Harmony dominates, we are more likely
to see Russia purse a status quo policy than if Deadlock rules.510
509 Mearsheimer 2001: 29-54. 510 This measure also provides a falsifiability check. We can compare the dominant view of the system versus actual behavior to discover any obvious mismatch between rhetoric and foreign policy. It is unlikely, however, that any one understanding will prove dominant. Instead, we should expect to find a “mixed” understanding of world politics. It is the relative salience of particular markers within this hierarchy and over time that is crucial.
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Table 6.3 traces the evolution of public statements by the Yeltsin regime
about the nature of world politics. In terms of raw frequency, Stag Hunt indicators
are clearly predominant. This pattern also holds for all years if we use standardized
frequency scores (references per 1000 words) with the exception of 1999, when a
surge in Deadlock indicators is recorded. Deadlock-type references, on the other
hand, are relatively infrequent, again with the exception of 1999. Perhaps more
worrisome, however, is the substantial presence of Prisoners’ Dilemma and
Deadlock indicators, indicating that language casting the international environment
as threatening is certainly present. Indeed, some 34 percent of the total recorded
observations is either Prisoners’ Dilemma or Deadlock. The apparent persistence of
these types of indicators suggests that the regime has not yet fully internalized a
non-violent conception of international order.
Table 6.3 Russian Views of the International “Game,” 1993-1999
Games 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999
Harmony 2.12 1.98 2 1.81 1.49 2.24 1.68 4043 (20%)
Stag Hunt 3.79 4.7 5.33 5.05 4.19 5.36 1.69 9209 (46%)
Prisoners’ Dilemma 1.83 2 1.67 1.97 2.32 1.77 1.69 3951 (19%)
Deadlock 1.25 1.92 1.39 1.35 1.77 1.02 1.99 3009 (15%)
N 2904 4376 3603 3134 1948 2502 1745 20212 Frequency per standardized unit (1000 words)
The year 1999 stands out as the clear exception to the pattern of a dominant
Harmony and Stag Hunt conception of international culture. Indeed, the year
records the eclipse of these measures by Prisoners’ Dilemma and Deadlock-style
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references for the first time. Why this shift? In effect, the coding categories are
capturing the rhetoric associated with the regime’s harshly negative response to
NATO’s air campaign against Serbian forces in Kosovo. Interestingly, however,
1999 is marked not only be an sharp increase (nearly 100 percent) in Deadlock
indicators but also in a dramatic reduction in Harmony (-33 percent) and Stag Hunt
(-317 percent) measures. This may indicate not only the Yeltsin regime’s
displeasure at NATO operations but a substantial, if perhaps temporary, rupture of
the once-dominant Stag Hunt/Harmony conception of world politics in official
rhetoric. In other words, this measure may have captured a “snapshot” of a moment
when the regime was undergoing a radical reassessment of the state of world
politics – as well as Russia’s position within it.
Deadlock “tokens” are especially important because they capture whether
violence is deemed possible (“thinkable”) by regime officials.511 Frequency scores
are a crude reflection of such sentiments, however, since they record only the
occurrence of “violent” realpolitik language, not the attitudes behind them. A leader
may invoke realpolitik language only to decry the use of violence in world politics,
for example. I therefore engage in a more qualitative study of Deadlock references
(N=3009). I argue that there is a noticeable evolution in these measures, with the
notion of interstate violence moving from “impossible” (1993-1995) to “possible”
(1996-97) to “inevitable” (1997-1999).
During the initial postcommunist period, we observe a remarkable absence
of concern over the possibility that Russia might be faced with a military threat.
Indeed, many of the references in this period center around the Cold War as a
511 This measure is limited by the fact that we do not have CATA data for the content of the international system. Nonetheless, we can agree that the dominant logic for most states in the system is not one of Deadlock or Harmony. The presence of Deadlock or Prisoners’ Dilemma markers also captures whether interstate violence is “imaginable” and “permissible” to Russian leaders. On the “impossibility of imagining violence,” see Abdelal et al, 2003: 13, 18.
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negative example of the Deadlock-type behavior that has no place in the post-Soviet
world order.512 Even Director of the Foreign Intelligence Service Evgenii Primakov,
who would later become Foreign Minister and then Prime Minister, could find little
to complain about. “Russia,” he noted in a 1995 press conference, “is not indifferent
to the expansion of NATO…But NATO today is not the NATO of the Cold War.
There is not and should not be a place in reasoned discussion about [how] the
expansion of NATO will create a beachhead for launching surprise attacks against
Russia or its allies.”513 Similarly, in a Foreign Ministry press briefing Grigorii
Karasin argued that “Russia is not searching for enemies but for friendship and
friends…the main thing is to avoid attempts to search for enemies and to avoid
judging matters in black-and-white terms on zero-sum (svoi/chuzhoi) principles.”514
Though threats were thought to be present in world politics, they tended to be
described as faceless forces– radical extremism and aggressive nationalism, for
example – rather than as traditional security threats.
By late 1996, however, a remarkable shift had taken place in the content of
Deadlock-type language. Urgent references to the mistakes of the Cold War, as well
as to the possibility of a new confrontation with the West, are staples of regime
rhetoric in 1996-97.515 General Rodionov was asked in a 1997 press conference, for
example, whether “NATO wanted to hinder our reforms and return to the years of 512 See, for example, Foreign Minister Andrei Kozyrev, Press Conference, MFA Press Center, 17 March 1993; Sergei Yastrzhembskii, Press Briefing, MFA Press Center, 20 April 1994; Sergei Yastrzhembskii, Press Briefing, MFA Press Center, 8 June 1994. 513 Evgenii Primakov, “Press Conference on the Occasion of the Presentation of the Document ‘Perspectives on NATO Expansion and Russian Interests,’” 25 November 1993. Note, however, that the phrase “Russia or its allies” is still emblematic of a Cold War logic. See also Grigorii Karasin, Press Briefing, MFA Press Center, 23 December 1993. 514 Grigorii Karasin, Press Briefing, MFA Press Center, 21 September 1993. 515 See for example: Gennadi Tarasov, Press Briefing, MFA Press Center, 28 November 1996; “Joint Press Conference with Foreign Minister Evgenii Primakov and American Secretary of State Madeleine Albright on the Results of their Negotiations,” 21 February 1997; “Joint Press Conference with Foreign Minister Evgenii Primakov and the Chinese Foreign Minister Qian Qichen,” 25 March 1997; “Joint Press Conference with Foreign Minister Evgenii Primakov and British Foreign Minister Robin Cook,” 14 July 1997.
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confrontation, to the Cold War?” He replied that while “we are trying to avoid this
with all means and forces,” the fact of NATO’s outflanking maneuver (oboiti flang)
to the East “could not be avoided during preparation of Russia’s military
doctrine.”516 Even Andrei Kozyrev, Russia’s first Foreign Minister who was viewed
as the embodiment of a pro-Western stance, argued that NATO expansion might
bring about “a revival of the enemy image and the subsequent rehabilitation of the
logics of confrontation and opposition.”517
The content of these Deadlock-type references shifted rapidly once again in
late 1997. Concern with a renewal of the Cold War was replaced with much more
concrete notions of a “frontal confrontation” with an aggressive NATO and the
West.518 Similarly, once diffuse threats such as “radical extremism” have been
replaced with concrete examples of international terrorism and, most notably, with
NATO’s use of military force in Kosovo. “I’ve already said that I should be worried
about NATO expansion,” Yeltsin noted in 1997. “That’s why we’re against the
expansion of NATO to the East since it could create an economic, as they say,
cordon sanitaire, around Russia.”519
Even before the NATO air campaign in April-June 1999, however, there is a
pervasive sense in these references that the normal state of world politics had been
suspended and that interstate violence had once more become a feature of the
international scene. Deadlock indicators, for example, tend to cluster around 516 Quoted in “Joint Press Conference with the Secretary of the Defense Council and Presidential Aide Yuri Baturin and Minister of Defense Igor Rodionov,” 7 February 1997. 517 Foreign Minister Andrei Kozyrev, Press Conference, MFA Press Center, 10 December 1993. See also Andrei Kozyrev, “Speech at the Scientific-Practical Conference “20 Years of the Helsinki Concluding Act. On the Path to a New Model of European Security,” 17 July 1995. 518 See for example “Interview with Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov (RTR),” 24 March 1999; “Joint Press Conference with Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov and Defense Minister Igor Sergeyev,” 31 March 1999. 519 The threat is still less of a direct attack – since Russia has nuclear weapons – than being marginalized and isolated in Europe. See for example President Boris Yeltsin, “Interview on the Conclusion of High-Level Meetings in Helsinki (ORT)” 17 March 1997.
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concern that the United Nations system, and therefore Russia itself, was
marginalized by the NATO-led operation. “They are ignoring the UN, just as they
are ignoring us,” was a popular sentiment across these references.520 Fear, too,
existed that this operation was merely a prelude to a wider NATO effort against
Moldova, Georgia, Azerbaijan and perhaps Russia itself.521
While this “games” measure allows us to paint a broad overview of Russian
rhetoric toward the international system, we also need more fine-grained measures.
In particular, measures that tap the frequency of different types of grievances are
especially important. We can use this measure, for example, to investigate whether,
and to what extend, the Yeltsin regime used various aspects of the current
international order as a foil for mobilizing domestic support behind his regime.
Moreover, such measures act as an early-warning measure for the regime’s level of
dissatisfaction with the status quo. Was the regime trying to mobilize public opinion
around its project by highlighting a particular set of grievances?
Table 6.4 records the frequency and standardized rate of occurrence for
seven different grievances. NATO refers to negative statements against the
institution, its actions, or its expansion. American unipolarity refers to negative
statements against the fact of American unipolarity, calls for the creation of a
multipolar world, or rejection of specific American policies. Raw material
appendage refers to concerns that Russia was being relegated to a subordinate
economic position, i.e., as a raw material supplier for industrialized countries.
Domestic interference records references to unwelcome interference in domestic
politics by foreign actors, whether states, non-governmental organizations, or
individuals such as George Soros. Prestige tracks references to the poor image of
520 Quote found in “Joint Press Conference with Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov and First Deputy Aide to the General Staff Yuri Baluyevsky,” MFA Press Center, 29 March 1999. 521 See, for example, “Joint Press Conference with Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov and General Nikolai Kvashnin,” 25 March 1999.
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Russia in the world, its desire for a “worthy place,” or concerns about being
consigned to an inferior position in world politics. Territorial integrity simply refers
to statements of alarm that Russia may follow the route of the Soviet Union and
disintegrate from within.522 And, finally, Russian diaspora tracks statements about
possible or actual mistreatment of Russian populations in the Baltic states and
Kazakhstan.
Table 6.4 Grievances Against the International System, 1993-1999
Grievance 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999
NATO .57 .24 .42 .58 .81 1.65 3.11 1939 (28%)
American Unipolarity .20 .11 .22 .34 .39 .19 .55 551 (8%)
Raw Material Appendage .3 .4 .38 .39 .46 .45 .42 748 (11%)
Domestic Interference .1 .1 .15 .14 .07 .17 .15 259 (4%)
Prestige .33 .33 .34 .33 .28 .34 .40 713 (10%)
Territorial Integrity 1.4 1.2 1.05 1.28 .78 .88 1 2179 (31%)
Russian Diaspora .3 .3 .32 .38 .10 .14 .15 531 (8%)
N 880 1139 972 1050 573 904 1402 6920 Standardized scores per 1000 words.
There is a clear hierarchy to these grievances. Concerns over territorial
integrity and NATO expansion far surpass any other set of grievances. These two
complaints also switch positions in the grievance hierarchy, with territorial concerns
dominate early but then surpassed by NATO-related issues after 1996. The
differences among these grievances are also important. NATO grievances are very
narrow, being tightly focused on NATO expansion and operations in Bosnia and 522 This does not necessarily fit the standard definition of “grievance.” Still, I elected to include the measure because it is possible that the regime is leveraging itself against an Other – in this case, against the threat of total collapse. Such appeals could be a powerful mobilizing tool even if no external actor is involved.
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then Kosovo. Territorial integrity concerns, on the other hand, are much more
diffuse, ranging from statements about the danger of disintegration (raspad) and
secession (miatezh, literally “rebellion”) to more muted concerns with standardizing
borders (both internal and external) in the postcommunist era.523
It might be expected, however, that territorial concerns would be prevalent
for a “new” state, and therefore should not be considered threatening unless the
desire to recast these boundaries is common. Such statements are non-existent.
Indeed, it is unhappiness with the porous nature of existing borders, along with the
pressing need to consolidate them, that is driving this category, not revisionist
sentiment. Generic comments about the slowness in creating a unified economic or
defense space, or the need to preserve Russia’s “space,” are the rule.524 Aside from
purely pragmatic reasons, we also observe references to sovereignty as the litmus
test for entry into international society. Counteracting the appearance of a less-than-
sovereign Russia is therefore identified as a key task in these documents.525
Concern with NATO expansion, on the other hand, more properly fits the
notion of a “grievance.” The dominance of NATO-related grievances is especially
striking if we refer to the standardized frequency scores, particularly for the post-
1996 era, where references double and then double again per unit of text each year.
This upswing also tracks with a rise in statist language and with the prevalence of
Deadlock language, suggesting that these components of an identity project are in
fact related to one another. The language of grievance also changes notably over
time, with depictions of NATO’s expansion as creating a “beachhead” for
523 President Boris Yeltsin, “Radio Broadcast (Ekho Moskvy), 3 October 1996; President Boris Yeltsin, “Press Conference with Russian President Boris Yeltsin (ORT),” 19 August 1993; President Boris Yeltsin, “Speech to the Participants of the Constitutional Assembly,” 12 July 1993; Grigorii Karasin, Press Briefing, MFA Press Center, 6 December 1993. 524 Mikhail Demurin, Press Briefing, MFA Press Center, 15 August 1996; Gennadi Tarasov, Press Briefing, MFA Press Center, 17 December 1996. 525 MFA Spokesman Grigorii Karasin, “Press Briefing on Current Questions in International Politics,” MFA Press Center, 31 August 1995.
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“encirclement” becoming a staple of the Yeltsin regime’s rhetoric by early 1997.526
Note that this hardening of grievance predates both the formal expansion of NATO
and the 1999 NATO campaign against Serbia. Though we lack comparative studies
of grievance thresholds, the rapidly escalating frequency of NATO-related
complaints suggests that the regime is “lashing” against a key aspect of the
international order. At this rate of grievance, we might expect that a higher
probability of a regime adopting some reactive measure exists. I explore this point
below.
Given this rate of grievance, it is also unsurprising that concern over
American unipolarity also increases over this period. In fact, this type of grievance
actually doubles between 1993 and 1997 and then records a further 40 percent
increase between 1997 and 1999. If one measure of a status quo is that it accepts the
prevailing structure of the international system, then it is clear that the Yeltsin
regime viewed the system with increasing disquiet. At the least, the growing
presence of these statements indicate that the regime is not being socialized into
accepting the American-led order. Nor does the regime appear convinced that
prevailing international institutions are capable of enforcing “strategic restraint” on
American power.527 There are, for example, frequent references for Russia to pursue
a “more realistic, multipolar and pragmatic foreign policy” because a unipolar order
undercuts the regime’s claims of Great Power status. A sense exists, too, that
American unipolarity cannot coexist with international society. “I want to
526 President Boris Yeltsin, “Interview on the Conclusion of High-Level Meetings in Helsinki (ORT)” 17 March 1997; “Joint Press Conference with the Chairman of the State Duma Defense Committee Lev Rokhlin and Former Minister of Defense Igor Rodionov,” 4 August 1997. On NATO aggression, see “Joint Press Conference with Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov and First Deputy Aide to the General Staff Yuri Baluyevsky,” MFA Press Center, 29 March 1999; “Joint Press Conference of Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov and Defense Minister Igor Sergeyev,” MFA Press Center, 31 March 1999; “Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs Announcement,” 14 May 1999. 527 Ikenberry 2001: 50-79.
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emphasize this [the need for a multipolar world] because there exists a tendency –
and this takes many forms – to create a unipolar world. No one, however, can accept
this, no one, that is, from the prevailing majority of international society.”528
By contrast, prestige grievances and fears of becoming a raw material
appendage (pridatok) all increase slightly over this period but remain consistently
much lower than NATO or territory-related concerns. Prestige grievances are
typically muted, and largely take the form of assertions of Russia’s desire to occupy
a “worthy place” in world politics. This “worthy place” is usually defined as being a
pole in a multipolar international order.529 To take one example: “Russia is
proposing the creation of a genuinely equal international order in which each state
has equal security and each nation has a worthy place in international society…This,
of course, is not suitable for those who would like to dictate to the world its [form
of] order and norms.”530
The benefits of adopting a CATA-based approach to studying identity also
becomes clear when we examine expressed fears about Russia’s transformation into
a “raw material appendage.” Despite the evocative language – also echoed in claims
of becoming a “milk cow for the West – these phrases are exceedingly rare,
occurring only once (“raw material appendage”) and twice (“milk cow”),
respectively. Instead, economic complaints tend to be generic and relatively banal
statements about economic discrimination and the forced second-class status of
Russian products. Similarly, alarm that globalization will relegate Russia to the 528 Quote in Evgenii Primakov, “Speech to the Conference Celebrating the 40th Anniversary of the Restoration of Russian-Japanese Relations,” MFA Press Center, 13 September 1996; for other examples, see Mikhail Demurin, Press Briefing, MFA Press Center, 21 November 1996; Mikhail Demurin, Press Briefing, MFA Press Center, 30 January 1997; Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov, “Speech to the All-World Congress of Russian Press,” Sovincenter, 22 June 1999. 529 President Boris Yeltsin, “Speech to the Eighth Assembly of People’s Deputies,” 11 March 1993; Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov, Press Conference, MFA Press Center, 22 January 1999; Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov, “Speech to the State Duma,” 27 March 1999. 530 Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov, “Speech to MGIMO,” 1 September 1999.
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status of Latin America is fairly common. Such statements are often paired with
exhortations to reinvigorate Russia’s economy or risk being left behind.531
What should we conclude about rates of grievance in the Yeltsin regime’s
rhetoric? Perhaps most importantly, it is apparent that these grievances never recede
below a certain “floor.” That is, the constant presence of grievances of all stripes
and, in some cases, the marked rise in their rate of occurrence, suggests a partly
antagonistic view of the international status quo does exist. With this grievance
pattern, we might expect that Russian strategy will exhibit a mostly status quo
profile but that, with significance grievance rates and rising Deadlock scores, some
revisionist activity will be recorded. In fact, the presence of a floor in grievances
suggests that a similar floor will be present in foreign policy as well. Crucially,
however, this floor is not a level one. Instead, it is gently sloping upwards,
suggesting that we may observe higher rates of revisionist behavior at the end of the
Yeltsin regime than at its founding as behavior follows increasingly antagonistic
rhetoric.
Interestingly, the lone exception to this general pattern is concern with the
fate of the Russian diaspora in neighboring states. Once feared by Western
observers as a readymade excuse for neo-imperialism, the Russian diaspora largely
faded from regime rhetoric after reaching its height in 1996. This eclipse was most
likely the result of a consolidation of statist markers as the dominant identity marker
in the regime’s identity project at roughly the same time. By drawing state
boundaries in political, rather than ethno-national terms, the fate of Russian-
speakers left outside these borders would diminish in importance.532
531 Grigorii Karasin, Press Briefing, MFA Press Center, 1 February 1996; “Joint Press Conference with Boris Yeltsin, Helmut Kohl and Jacques Chirac (RTR),” 26 March 1998. 532 Director of the Near East and Northern Africa Department Viktor Posuvalyk, Press Briefing, MFA Press Center, 14 April 1994; Grigorii Karasin, Press Briefing, MFA Press Center, 14 November 1995.
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It is possible, however, that the early stages of a revisionist drive abroad
would begin with vulnerable targets at home. That is, scapegoating against
vulnerable internal populations or against amorphous yet powerful domestic
opponents could be a precursor to broad international adventures by shifting an
identity project in a more exclusive direction. This would in turn create internal
opposition that would force the regime to reinforce its own rhetorical claims, thus
cementing its commitment to its identity project by publicly professing support and
by raising the costs of inaction or failure.533 Did Yeltsin and his regime invoke
scapegoating language against internal foes?
Table 6.5 outlines the standardized frequency of negative references to
different populations: separatists, terrorists, criminal groups, and ethno-religious
“agitators.” There is a relatively evenly clustered set of internal foes that the Yeltsin
regime chose to emphasize as a threat to the regime and the state. This is not to
suggest, of course, that such opponents were imaginary. Indeed, there is little
question that these actors represented threats, though of varying intensity, to the
state. Instead, what is of interest here is the type of frames that the regime chose to
cast these problems in. Quite clearly, terrorism emerges as the dominant internal foe
for the new regime, closely followed by criminal groups and ethno-religious
“agitators.”534 There is also a pronounced increase in all markers save for
secessionists during the first Chechen War (December 1994 to August 1996) when
measured using standardized scores. There is also a sharp spike in three of the four
measures – again, with the exception of “secessionists” – during 1999, when the
second Chechen War began. In fact, the surge in terrorist indicators recorded in
533 We witnessed a similar dynamic in the Pakistani, Soviet, and Napoleonic France cases against “Hindu fifth-columnists,” “wreckers,” and the “Democ-Soc movement,” respectively. 534 Tokens included “radicals,” “extremists,” “chauvinists,” “Talibs,” and “Wahhabites,” for example.
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1999 is almost double that of the frequency recorded during the first Chechen War.
This leaves little doubt that the dominant frame of the second Chechen War at its
outset was a struggle against terrorism.
Table 6.5 Internal Enemies: A Question of Scapegoating?
Possible “Others” 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 Separatists .17 .16 .14 .16 .08 .06 .11 269
(11%)Terrorists .14 .19 .43 .59 .2 .48 1.03 850
(34%)Criminal Groups .22 .29 .38 .45 .39 .19 .62 727
(29%)Ethno-Religious Agitators
.13 .20 .60 .48 .24 .26 .39 689 (27%)
N 213 355 524 501 179 239 524 2535 Note that 1995, 1996, and 1999 are war years. Occurrence per standardized unit (1000 words).
What is particularly fascinating about this hierarchy of potential enemies is
that exclusivist rhetoric does not settle to pre-war levels but instead resets itself at
higher rates of occurrence. In three of the four categories, levels recorded in 1997
are substantially higher than in 1994, providing evidence that rhetoric is “sticky”
and cumulates over time. Despite the presence of these markers, however, it is
difficult to conclude that the Yeltsin regime was wielding exclusivist language as a
core component of its identity project. Though it did make use of these threats as
tools for mobilization, they are relatively infrequent when viewed from the macro-
level of the entire project. Moreover, it is clear that the project is not being drawn
along narrow ethnic or religious criteria. The regime went out of its way, for
example, to disavow any intention of “fighting a war with Islam” in Chechnya.535
535 Deputy Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov, Press Briefing, MFA Press Center, 22 December 1994; Vladimir Putin, “S terroristami govorit’ ne bydem – ikh bydem unichtozhat’ [There will be no talking with terrorists – they’ll be destroyed], Kommersant’’'' 18 September 1999; Mikhail Rakhmanin, Press Briefing, MFA Press Center, 7 December 1999.
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It is possible, of course, that the regime is using language that cues ethnic
frames among Russians that are not explicitly stated and therefore invisible to the
content analysis. The use of such terms as “bandit” (coded here as Criminal) or
“fighter” (boyevik, coded as Secessionist) may already be encoded with racial
meaning that is obvious to Russians but less so to non-Russians. A more ethno-
graphic method is perhaps more appropriate to teasing out the multiple meanings of
these terms. That said, however, the fact that the regime often feels the need to place
adjectives in front of these terms (i.e., Chechen fighters) suggests that they may be
ethnically hollow terms.536
The war in Chechnya was obviously central to the regime’s political
fortunes. It stands to reason that if scapegoating was taking place, it would be here,
in exclusivist language that drew the political boundaries of the new Russian state
against an internal, alien Other. Yet we find little evidence of such a project, either
in terms of frequency of reference (689 ethnic references in 2.2 million words) or in
strength of association. Here I measure the strength of the association between a
control category of Chechnya (which lists all instances of Chechnya as well as the
surrounding region) and the four frames listed above.
Unsurprisingly, the secessionist frame records the highest association score
at .114 (θ value).537 This number is probably artificially low, since the territorial
grievance measure used above and the secessionist frame are mutually exclusive
categories. The next three measures all score cosine theta values that barely hover
above random chance: ethno-religious (.038), criminal (.053), and terrorism (.03). In
essence, this means that while these categories are being invoked, the regime is
536 See Hopf 2002: 206fn.184. 537 Cosine theta values (θ) assess the probability of co-occurrence of two categories within a delimited block of text (here, 25 words). Such a measure is appropriate for answering the question, what is the strength of the association between two categories? A zero value is equivalent to random chance; the higher the θ, the greater the probability that the categories cluster in a meaningful way.
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mostly placing the first Chechen War within the context of a secessionist struggle,
rather than one between Russians and ethnic Chechens or religious extremists. We
can conclude, then, that while some degree of exclusiveness was present, it was
nonetheless quite marginal when compared with the overall nature of the project.538
The one exception is the start of the second Chechen War, where measures of
terrorism spike dramatically; the last two quarters of 1999 account for almost a
quarter of all references to terrorism from 1993 until 1999.
Finally, it is useful to track expressed preferences for strategies over time.
These not only offer a window into the types of strategies deemed appropriate for a
regime but also provide a check for falsification of the proposed link between
identity and choice of strategy. I created categories for five different strategies.
Integration refers to positive statements about the need to pursue integration with
other countries. This category includes references not only to Western countries and
institutions but also to countries within the Commonwealth of Independent States
(CIS). Autarky records all favorable mentions of policies of economic self-reliance
or self-isolation in world politics.
Defensive military strategies refer to a favorable statements about the need
to maintain sufficient military forces to deter rivals, modernize the armed forces, or
to balance against emerging threats. A fourth category, offensive military strategies,
captures favorable references to strategies designed to increase the size of military
forces or defense expenditures, to deploy or use military force to counter rivals, or
to acquire territory or new satellites. References to strategies designed to create
alliances or coalitions around expansionist ambitions are also included in this
category. And, finally, non-alignment refers to either proclamations of neutrality or
538 This absence of “demonizing” language in official rhetoric challenges existing arguments that the Yeltsin regime used crude stereotypes of Chechens to mobilize support. See for example Russell 2002: 73-95.
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to a policy of “tacking” between different poles (kolebanie), a concept close to
neorealist conceptions of “buck-passing.”539
Table 6.6 Theory of Action: Relative Salience of Preferences Over Strategies
Strategy 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 Integration .71 .94 .27 .67 .36 .59 .54 1462
(57%) Autarky .02 .04 .03 .03 .03 .02 .02 56
(2%) Defensive Military Strategies
.20 .11 .18 .12 .20 .24 .23 387 (14%)
Offensive Military Strategies
.15 .11 .09 .04 .04 .03 .08 179 (7%)
Non-Alignment .42 .28 .23 .20 .26 .31 .18 638 (23%)
N 486 644 526 356 174 285 251 2722 Standardized scores per 1000 words.
Table 6.6. displays the regime’s hierarchy of strategic preferences between
1993 and 1999. A remarkably consistent preference for integration-style strategies is
evident, with such references accounting for 53 percent of all occurrences. This
result is also stable within each year under study. Yet it is clear that the standardized
frequency score for integration references has decreased substantially from a high-
water mark in 1994 at .94 to .54 in 1999, with 1995 (.26) and 1997 (.36) standing
out as especially severe dips in favorable references to integration. Non-alignment
and defensive military policies rank second and third among strategies, respectively.
Curiously, non-alignment strategies drop in salience over time, with a 57 percent
reduction recorded between 1993 and 1999. Defensive military strategies do appear
as a robust feature of the identity architecture, however, with a slight increase being
recorded over time. Notably, offensive military strategies and autarky appear
infrequently in these texts. In overall terms, this pattern is consistent with a regime
539 Christensen and Snyder 1990: 137-68.
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that is mostly satisfied, but still uncommitted, to the post-Soviet international status
quo. The durable presence of strategies other than integration suggests that the
regime is hedging its rhetorical bets.
The measures used so far have largely been concerned with the persistence
and consistence of the content of the Yeltsin regime’s identity project. We are also
interested, however, in the degree of coherence across various components of this
project. Possible fissures and open contradictions in the regime’s project create the
space necessary for regime critics, as well as average citizens, to pressure the
regime and force it to clarify its stand on a particular issue. In other words, these
contradictions create entrapment opportunities that may force the regime to escalate
its rhetoric and to adopt a more assertive foreign policy stance.
One might suppose, for example, that the Yeltsin regime’s project is best
characterized as a “hybrid” of civic and statist markers flecked with less salient
fragments of nationalism and Soviet-era themes. Yet there are a number of potential
conflicts within such an identity hierarchy. I explore two of the most important such
conflicts here. First, and perhaps most obviously, there may be tension between
civic aspirations of being a “normal” and “Western” power and the statist emphasis
on Great Power-ness. To be sure, the role identity of a Great Power does not
necessary need to take its meaning from opposition to the West. It does imply,
however, that friction may arise if this role is actively denied, or perceived to be, by
the West or leading Powers within it. Here I engage in a focused comparison
between key-word-in-context (KWIC) references to being a “normal” state and a
“Great Power.” Do these role identities conflict?
There are at least two discernible patterns of meaning in the 822 references
to “normal” in the Yeltsin regime’s official rhetoric. First, there is a clear emphasis
on Russia itself being a normal state by virtue of its possession of democratic
attributes. There are, for example, clear links drawn between Russia’s possession of
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a “democratic society” and multiparty political system and its status as a normal
state in world politics.540 The creation of a law-based society and market economy,
if not fully realized, is also held up as evidence of Russia’s evident normality.541
Aspirations for Russians to enjoy a “normal” life – meant as living in a law-based
democratic state – are especially common.542 Or, as Sergei Yastrzhembskii argued,
postcommunist developments in Russia have led to the “creation of a normal image
of the Russian Federation as a democratic state.”543 This sentiment was best
captured by Foreign Minister Kozyrev in 1993: “Russia is a normal democratic
state, not a relict of the former Soviet Union…it is now capable of relations and
cooperation on an entirely new, qualitatively new level.”544
Second, there is clearly a relational component to notions of normality, with
Russia being viewed as a member, perhaps even a leading one, of “normal”
international society.545 “Russia has not only forged normal relations with the
majority of states in a historically short period of time,” noted Grigorii Karasin, “but
540 On democratic society, see Sergei Yastrzhembskii, Press Conference, MFA Media Center, 16 March 1993 and Andrei Kozyrev, Press Conference, MFA Media Center, 21 December 1994. On multiparty, see Boris Yeltsin, “Address to the Citizens of Russia,” 20 March 1993. 541 On law-based norms of normality, see Boris Yeltsin, “Speech to the Fourth Session of the Industrialists and Entrepreneurs of Russia,” 16 April 1993. On the importance of a market economy, see Boris Yeltsin, “Address to the Session of the Federation Council,” 11 January 1994 and Boris Yeltsin, “Annual State of the Nation Address,” 23 February 1996. 542 Grigorii Karasin, Press Briefing, MFA Press Center, 2 August 1993; Grigorii Karasin, Press Briefing, MFA Press Center, 6 August 1993; Boris Yeltsin, “Televised Address to the Russian People (ORT),” 15 December 1995; Boris Yeltsin, “Speech of the President of Russia in Ekaterinburg,” 15 February 1996. 543 Sergei Yastrzhembskii, Press Briefing, MFA Press Center, 16 March 1993; Boris Yeltsin, “Interview of President Yeltsin by El’dar Ryazanov (ORT),” 16 November 1993. 544 Foreign Minister Andrei Kozyrev, Press Conference, MFA Press Center, 10 December 1993. See also Andrei Kozyrev, “Speech at the Scientific-Practical Conference “20 Years of the Helsinki Concluding Act. On the Path to a New Model of European Security,” 17 July 1995 and Grigorii Karasin, Press Briefing, MFA Press Center, 4 June 1996. 545 Grigorii Karasin, Press Briefing, MFA Press Center, 2 July 1994; Valerii Nestrushkin, Press Briefing, MFA Press Center, 26 February 1999.
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quickly moved into the club of leading democratic world Powers.”546 Of course, this
belief that Russia should be viewed by others as a member of the community does
not necessary translate into harmonious or cooperative relations. Rather, it suggests
that Russia will abide by the existing norms governing the use of violence toward
in-group members. For example, on 1 June 1995, the Director of the MFA’s Bureau
for Information and Press, Grigorii Karasin, claimed the prerogatives of “any
normal modern state” by arguing that Russia would explore all ways to protect
compatriots in the Baltic states but “would not discount the direct use of force.”547
Still, the example should not be overemphasized, for the lone reference to being a
“normal Great Power” within the civic category defined its attributes in terms of
economic potential rather than military might or past battlefield glories.548
Yeltsin's regime also heavily emphasized Russia's in-group membership by
drawing clear boundaries between it and non-members who were less-than-civilized
or normal. Kazakhstan and the Baltic states are often portrayed as aspirants to
modernity who will only attain normality if they can enforce the rights of Russian-
speakers in their respective states.549 North Korea, Iraq, and Cuba are also often
singled out as states that do not yet enjoy normal relations with the international
community.550 These suggests that Russia at least partly agrees with the
546 Grigorii Karasin, “Briefing on Current Questions about International Politics,” 15 August 1995. Note that there are far more references to a “normal international society” than to Russia being a member of a “Western democratic” club (N=1). This suggests that the two referent groups do not have overlapping memberships: Russia may be “normal,” but it is not yet “Western.” 547 Grigorii Karasin, Press Briefing, MFA Press Center, 1 June 1995. 548 Foreign Minister Andrei Kozyrev, Press Conference, MFA Press Center, 10 December 1993. This lone reference to a term across categories is suggestive that the two are viewed as mutually distinct categories, not an artifact of the coding scheme itself. 549 MFA Press Representative Nikita Myatovskii, “On Pressing Questions of International Politics,” MFA Press Center, 25 April 1995; Mikhail Demurin, Press Briefing, MFA Press Center, 12 November 1996; Vladimir Rakhmanin, Press Briefing, MFA Press Center, 23 November 1999. 550 Grigorii Karasin, “Briefing on Current International Issues,” MFA Press Center, 13 July 1995; 1018, 1001,
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international consensus that these states are “rogue states,” though it is clear from
these speeches that the Russian side is much less convinced of the need to isolate
these states (particularly Cuba). Interestingly, Chechnya often appears as a deviant
state where violence and anarchy have prevented its incorporation as a “normal,
civilized part of the Russian Federation.”551
The sharp contrast between civic and statist conceptions of Russia's role in
world politics becomes apparent when we examine the 254 references to Russia as a
Power (derzhava). An overwhelming majority of all references to derzhava cluster
around only two adjectives: “Great” (velikaia) and “nuclear.” While the content
analysis reflects its salience in the identity hierarchy, it does not track the meaning
of the concept or whether it has in fact shifted across time. This is especially
important with the idea of a Great Power since a number of political camps in
postcommunist Russia have used this symbol. We need, therefore, to determine if
there is a specific meaning attached to the notion of a Great Power in the regime’s
rhetoric.
There is a consistent and persistent effort throughout these speeches and
press conferences to reinforce the idea that Russia remains a Great Power in world
politics. Indeed, while this stance is often attributed to Evgenii Primakov, it runs
like a red skein throughout official rhetoric from early Yeltsin to Igor Ivanov,
Primakov’s successor.552 Great Power-ness centers around the idea of Russia as an
indispensable pole of world politics and a guarantor of international peace and
stability by preventing disorder, itself defined as an unstable balance of force (that
is, unipolarity). As Primakov noted, Russia should pursue a “diversified policy” that
551 Deputy Director of the MFA Bureau of Information and Press Mikhail Demurin, Press Briefing, MFA Press Center, 28 March 1995. The quote is found in Vladimir Rakhmanin, Press Briefing, MFA Press Center, 2 November 1999. 552 Andrei Kozyrev, Press Conference, MFA Press Center, 9 March 1995; Evgenii Primakov, Press Briefing, MFA Press Center, 12 January 1996; Vladimir Rakhmanin, Press Briefing, MFA Press Center, 23 March 1999.
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seeks to prevent “dis-balance” by securing Russia as a “stabilizer” in world
affairs.553 Efforts to block Russia or to deny it its “worthy place” in world politics
are themselves threatening not only for Russia security but also for world order
itself.554
The concept is also tied to a sense of independence and a recognition of
equal status for Russia at the councils of power. As Yeltsin himself argued, “Russia
is a Great Power and will be Great Power…[it] does not go about with a hand
extended, begging for aid.”555 Such status is justified by Russia’s continued
membership in the UN Security Council as well as by its territorial size.556 Russia’s
victories and sacrifices in the Great Patriotic War are also raised on occasion as a
means of both justifying and reaffirming Russia’s self-image as a Great Power.557
If the study of civic markers revealed two dimensions to international
society – normal/not normal and Western/not Western – then the statist category
adds a third: Great Power or not. This category does not necessarily overlap with
being Western, though it does with notions of civilization. That is, there is much
less emphasis in statist language on being “Western” than being “Great,” which
suggests that international society consists (for the regime) of a set of ever-
narrowing circles from community to Great Power to Western Great Power.558 553 Evgenii Primakov, “Speech to the State Duma Committee for International Affairs,” 28 February 1996; Grigorii Karasin, Press Briefing, MFA Press Center, 27 June 1995. 554 Deputy Director of the MFA Bureau of Information and Press G. Tarasov, Press Briefing, 4 November 1997; Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov, “Speech to the State Duma During Discussions of the Agreement ‘On Friendship, Partnership, and Cooperation Between Russia and Ukraine,’” 25 December 1998; Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov, “Speech to MGIMO,” 1 September 1999. 555 President Boris Yeltsin, “Press Conference (ORT),” 4 October 1994. 556 “Joint Press Conference of Foreign Minister Primakov and Italian Foreign Minister Lamberto Dini,” 7 April 1998; G. Tarasov, Press Briefing, MFA Press Center, 5 February 1999; 1287. 557 Defense Minister Pavel Grachev, Press Conference, Ministry of Defense, 6 May 1994; MFA Representative Valerii Nestrushkin, Press Briefing, MFA Press Center, 22 June 1998. 558 This is consistent with sociological concepts of prestige and status hierarchies. See, for example, Berger, Ridgeway, and Zelditch 2002: 157-79 and Berger, Ridgeway, Fisek, and Norman 1998: 379-405.
285
Indeed, there are numerous occasions where these public speakers position Russia
outside the normative community by referring to the “Western Powers,” implying
that Russia is not of them.559
Possession of nuclear weapons is also heavily emphasized in these public
statements. Such references do not claim that these weapons are militarily usable,
however. Instead, there is emphasis on the mere possession of these weapons as
symbolic currency; that is, as symbols that reaffirm Russia’s Great Power status (not
necessarily security).560 The peer group is overwhelmingly the United States,
though there are scattered references to China as a nuclear Great Power. This
conception of being a nuclear Great Power is attached to a sense of special
responsibilities that supersede those of the international community. “It is very
important to discuss the matter [of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty] with our
partners in the club of nuclear Powers…We are seriously unsettled by the prospects
of the so-called ‘threshold states.’ Yes, in principle it would be best if the agreement
was the result of the common opinion and common position of all of international
society. Here we need to find a strict balance between the interests of a specific state
and those of the entire international community.”561
Another powerful measure of the differences that lie between civic and
statist markers is provided by the strength of the association between each identity
category and various grievances. As outlined in Table 6.7, each identity type is
associated with its own cluster of “hot button” issues. 559 Foreign Minister Andrei Kozyrev, Press Conference, MFA Press Center, 12 September 1995; “Joint Press Conference with Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov and Ukrainian Foreign Minister Boris Tarasyk,” 19 November 1998. 560 On nuclear weapons as instruments of prestige, see Potter 2003: 146-78. For similar statements, see Grigorii Karasin, “Press Briefing on Contemporary Issues,” 28 September 1995; Vladimir Rakhmanin, Press Briefing, MFA Press Center, 14 October 1999. 561 Mikhail Demurin, Press Briefing, MFA Press Center, 13 August 1996. In this formulation, however, a position of superiority is used to enforce order, not break it. A statist identity does not necessarily mean conflictual behavior, just as a civic identity does not necessarily result in cooperative behavior.
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Table 6.7 Strength of Association Between Identity Type and Grievance Type
(Cosine Theta Values)
Grievances Civic Statist NATO .209 .252 American Unipolarity .316 .338 Raw Material Appendage .382 .426 Domestic Interference .403 .361 Prestige .445 .341 Territorial Integrity .27 .263 Russian Diaspora .523 .374 Nuclear Weapons* .185 .345 Double Standards* .475 .369
* Special codes. θ Context delimiter = 25 words
On balance, civic identity markers have a much higher association with
prestige concerns, the welfare of the Russian diaspora, and perceived domestic
interference than statist markers. These grievances all relate to membership within a
particular status group, the international community. Concerns over domestic
interference, for example, make sense because it implies that the same standards
apply to Russia as the international community. Complaints suggesting otherwise
reflect a concern that Russia does not, in fact, warrant the same treatment as
members of the in-group.
Similarly, prestige grievances clearly reflect alarm that Russia is not a full-
fledged (ravnopravie) member of international society and that its rightful place as a
“normal” power is being denied. Yeltsin’s regime did raise the possibility of being
isolated on frequent occasions but never referred to Russia as a social outcast
(izgoi), reserving the term for those states that the international community had
defined as “rogues.”562 The strong association between civic markers and concern
for the Russian diaspora can also be understood as a complaint that the rules and
content of the international community, and the community of democratic nations in
562 On “social outcasts,” see Grigorii Karasin, MFA Press Briefing Transcript, MFA Press Center, 21 March 1996.
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particular, is not being applied consistently toward the Baltic states and the Russian-
speaking populations within them.
Fears of becoming a raw material appendage, and, to a lesser extent, alarm
over NATO expansion, are more closely identified with statist-type identity
markers. Both grievances cluster around the question of security threats and directly
address the continued viability of the state as an independent political actor. These
grievances also reflect the more power-centric nature of statist language. Each
grievance, after all, represents either an internal or external threat that is bent on
eroding even further Russia’s precarious position in the international balance.
These divergent sets of grievances are especially stark when we consider
two additional issues: the appropriate role for nuclear weapons and the existence of
Western double standards.563 Statist markers are much more likely to co-occur with
references to nuclear weapons and, in particular, to Russia’s “Greatness” because of
possession of these weapons (see above). Indeed, there is only a weak association
between civic identity tropes and possession of nuclear weapon, suggesting that
nuclear weapons and their possession is not viewed as “acceptable” criteria for
membership in the wider international community. On the other hand, the category
of civic identity has a much stronger degree of association with complaints about
the existence of Western hypocrisy than does the statist category. This, again,
indicates that civic identity conceptions about being a “normal” and “Western”
member of the international community are being challenged (or perceived to be) by
Western actions. The fact that statist markers have a much weaker association with
such grievances is indicative that statist conceptions of identity do not necessarily
563 President Boris Yeltsin, “Press Conference with President Yeltsin and American President Bill Clinton,” 14 January 1994; Mikhail Demurin, Press Briefing, MFA Press Center, 10 August 1995; Vladimir Rakhmanin, Press Briefing, MFA Press Center, 15 December 1999.
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take their shape around being a member of a community but perhaps in being
outside that community (though not necessarily in opposition to it).
Simply put, it matters what identity type is ascendant within a regime’s
identity project. Each identity not only draws on different content to build
allegiances between regime and citizen but also articulates different grievances and
purposes. To be sure, there is some overlap between identity categories: civic and
statist markers have a roughly equal strength of association with concern over
American unipolarity and territorial integrity, for example. Rather than a hybrid
civic-statist identity, however, it is more accurate to depict the Yeltsin regime’s
project as an uneasy alliance between fairly divergent identity types. This identity
hierarchy is persistent and consistent, though statist markers do become the most
frequently invoked type after 1996. The price of relying on these different identity
types is likely to be the establishment of an equilibrium where the regime may find
itself periodically entrapped in its own rhetorical contradictions.
To conclude, we might expect to witness periodic crises as a means of
bolstering the regime’s standing if domestic opposition mobilizes using the regime’s
own contradictory rhetoric. In addition, we should expect a rising level of revisionist
actors, if only slowly, given the “ratchet effect” of rhetoric as it accumulates over
time. The Yeltsin regime did, in fact, have a stable identity project during this
formative era. Statist and civic markers clearly dominated, though nationalist,
Eurasian and Soviet identity categories were also present in the rhetoric. A stable set
of grievances was also present, with fears over territorial integrity, NATO
expansion, and American unipolarity recorded with the greatest frequency. There
was, however, little evidence of internal scapegoating along ethnic or religious lines.
A marked upswing in Prisoners’ Dilemma and Deadlock views of the international
order was evident in 1999, however, reflecting a clear sensitivity to NATO
operations in Kosovo.
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Postcommunist Russia therefore appears as a mostly status quo actor but one
that was becoming increasingly dissatisfied with facets of the international order.
II. SOCIETAL OPPOSITION AND POPULAR RECEPTION
OF YELTSIN’S IDENTITY PROJECT, 1993-1999
The measures provided by the quantitative content analysis and cluster
analysis are useful for illustrating the broad contours of the regime’s identity
project. They are, however, limited in their ability to probe the depth to which these
markers have been accepted or rejected by the populace. For this, we need to turn to
a different set of tools. Public opinion surveys can, for example, highlight the
acceptance of particular identity traits by a sample of the population.564 These
surveys can also indirectly measure identity receptivity by examining whether the
institutions and symbols of the new regime are increasingly been seen as legitimate,
both in absolute and in comparative terms (that is, relative to a prior regime).
Ethnographic approaches can also be used to “root out” both the acceptance of these
identity markers in everyday practices (say, in street demonstrations by groups
supporting the official line) and their contestation by marginalized groups,
especially if such opposition remains either latent or is silenced by restrictive media
practices. Below I examine both the degree of popular acceptance of the Yeltsin
project and societal opposition to it.
Russia’s exit from communism would prove a turbulent one. Indeed, it is
unsurprising that Yeltsin’s regime would encounter serious resistance from society
as it tried to legitimate itself atop a civic-statist identity project. The collapse of the
first Russian republic (1991-93), which ended with the violent storming of the
564 Ideally, we would have poll data for various measures of collective identity or, conversely, close-range focus group work that measured the strength of association with markers in official rhetoric.
290
(democratically elected) Russian White House, only underscored the tenuous nature
of Yeltsin’s grip on popular legitimacy. Pressure from below was exerted, for
example, through collective action in the form of Communist rallies and labor
strikes in mines. Trade union strikes, for example, have often encompassed more
than 100,000 participants. On 4 November 1996, for example, 198 of Russia’s 218
coal mines went out on strike, resulting in demonstrations totaling some 460,000
demonstrators. The next day, a FITUR trade union strike “For Labor, Pay, and
Social Guarantees,” reached 100,000 participants in Moscow alone. Newly released
Goskomstat data records 17,007 protests in 1997, 11,162 in 1998, and 7,285 in
1999.565 In total, the new regime was faced with at least 82 large-scale strikes,
boycotts, and political protests between 1993 and 1999.566
Not all opposition should be labeled “anti-project,” however. We are
especially interested in whether the regime was (1) faced with rival projects from
groups that did not accept the current order and (2) successfully consolidating its
own position. It is clear that on the first score, the regime did manage to beat back
anti-project challengers and forced them to play by the rules the regime devised or
suffer marginalization. The Communist Party (KPRF), for example, remained a
fierce opponent of many of Yeltsin’s core policies but in many respects did not
challenge the overriding identity project that informed such policies. By 1996, the
KPRF had shed its anti-project orientation and had largely accepted the ideational
rules of the game – and even came to embrace market economy principles, though
with some reservations.567 Other anti-project forces, notably the nationalist-
565 “Klassnaia bor’ba [Class Struggle],” Kommersant’’, 23 November 2004. 566 VRA Reader dataset. Available upon request. 567 Flikke 1999: 275-98.
291
xenophobic parties such as the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia (LDPR), slowly
lost steam and remained on the margins of the Russian political scene.568
Despite this success, however, the basic dilemma of the Yeltsin regime
remained: it simply could not gain traction in its efforts to legitimate itself among
citizens. As Table 6.8 demonstrates, the regime was essentially treading water
between 1993 and 1998, unable to make any kind of inroads against nostalgia for
the prior Soviet regime. Indeed, the results of these public opinion polls are doubly
discouraging. On the one hand, the regime’s own standing in the eyes of its citizens
is remarkably flat. On the other hand, perceptions of the pre-perestroika regime are
not only higher than the Yeltsin regime’s standing but are increasing over time.
Table 6.8 An Uphill Climb: Perceptions of Regime Legitimacy, 1992-1998. 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996a 1996b 1998 % with Favorable View of Current Political System
14
36
35
26
28
38
36
% with Favorable View of Former Political System
50 62 51 67 59 60 72
% with Favorable View of Current Economic System
9 29 14 16 22 29 31
% with Favorable View of Former Economic System
62 75 61 79 72 71 81
Source: New Russia Barometers II to XII, Russiavotes.org
Seeking a means to consolidate his shaky regime, Yeltsin and his advisors
elected to declare war against the small, rebellious republic of Chechnya in
December 1994. Assured of both the need for a “short, victorious war” and the ease
of obtaining one, Yeltsin sought to the rewards that would attend a short but sharp
568 The LDPR received 23 percent of the vote in 1993, 11.4 percent in 1995, and only 6 percent in 1999.
292
military victory.569 Such a victory promised to silence critics by proving the
effectiveness of the regime and its project. Moreover, a convincing victory would
tilt the playing field against rivals with alternative visions of Russia. This was
especially important given the still-recent electoral success of Vladimir
Zhirinovskii’s nationalist LDPR, which garnered a stunning 23 percent of the party
list vote in the December 1993 Duma elections.570 So intent on removing General
Dzhokhar Dudaev, Chechnya’s nominal president, from office that Yeltsin
authorized no less than five separate attempts to overthrow Dudaev prior to the
December 1994. Indeed, despite the clear failure of earlier efforts – notably, on 26
November 1994, when an anti-Dudaev coup was launched with Russian support but
fizzled – Yeltsin doggedly increased the stakes. It is undoubtedly true that a
negotiated settlement was difficult to reach, not least due to the personalities of the
two main principals and rapidly deteriorating conditions in Chechnya. Still, it is
hard to deny that Yeltsin’s desire for a quick and dramatic victory overrode the logic
of a political settlement.
The war proved to be a major miscalculation, however, and would drag on
until a settlement was reached at Khasavyurt on 31 August 1996. Somewhere
between 20,000 and 100,000 civilians lost their lives, mostly due to indiscriminate
Russian artillery bombardment, while perhaps 10,000-15,000 soldiers were killed
and some 250,000 Chechens displaced.571
569 For overviews of the origins of the first Chechen War, see Evangelista 2002; Tishkov 2001; Lieven 1998; Dunlop 1998. On a quick and easy victory, see Gall and de Waal 1997: 161 and Baranets 1998: 232. 570 This was good enough for first place, with Yeltsin’s Democratic Russia in second 15.5 percent and the KPRF at 12.4 percent. Colton 2000: 231. 571 The best estimate for the casualty totals is 12,000 soldiers and 40,000 civilians across the two wars. See “Nepravitel’stvennyi doklad [Non-governmental document],” Novaia gazeta, 8 September 2003, 12-13. The KSM further estimates that 14,000 soldiers were killed, along with 30,000 wounded, in the two wars. See “Casualty Figures” Jamestown Foundation Chechnya Weekly, 20 February 2003.
293
The war and the small “pocket protests” that sprung up in opposition to the
war would also represent the most serious challenge that the new regime would
face. As detailed below, these protestors sought to call attention to the mismatch
between Yeltsin’s rhetoric and the brutal policies being pursued in Chechnya. These
small antiwar groups and movements were, in effect, policing the boundaries of his
rhetorical commitment and were seeking to “entrap” him back into compliance with
his earlier statements and actions.
The movement, despite its fractious nature, managed to exert pressure on a
weak Yeltsin regime that was still struggling to gain momentum in its bid to
entrench its project. Its gamble on a “short, victorious war” would backfire sharply
as a vocal element capitalized on (and helped generate) widespread disapproval of
Yeltsin’s turn. The crisis over Chechnya “brought the Russian political system to
the brink,” though as Michael McFaul notes, “it did not push it over the edge.”572
How a small, disorganized set of actors, with few fiscal resources, a “weak” civil
society, and a largely untested and unconsolidated party system could exert pressure
on the Yeltsin regime is the subject of the following section.
To date, the role of these antiwar groups has largely been ignored. Those
few studies that have been conducted have focused on the Committee of Soldiers’
Mothers (KSM), a highly visible group created during perestroika that championed
the rights of soldiers and highlighted excesses in Chechnya.573 Yet the KSM, while
important, was only one of many groups that lent their collective weight to
challenging the regime’s policy in Chechnya and the retrenchment from the
regime’s own civic and inclusive language. Though there is a general consensus that
such groups were small, we lack even basic data on the size of these groups, the
572 McFaul 2001: 258. 573 On the role of the KSM, see Sperling 2003; Mendelson 2002: 39-69; Vallance 2000: 109-28.
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number of demonstrations they conducted, and their strategies and tactics for
entrapping the regime.
Why this absence? Two assumptions appear to dominant in the study of
postcommunist civil society: (1) that political contestation must be located primarily
in formal institutions such as the Duma and (2) that a “weak” civil society cannot
influence the policy-making process. Yet what is important to recognize is that
while civil society may be weak after a totalitarian state collapses, elites in an
unstable regime may be extremely sensitive to even small protests. Elites may not
be used to societal pressures of any sort, and may have just witnessed significant
mobilization for the first time. There is no doubt that the appearance of street protest
only a short year after the White House was stormed was alarming to Yeltsin and
his advisors. Indeed, it is reasonable to expect that even a small mobilization could
be threatening if it threatened to spark a “bank run” on regime legitimacy, especially
if that regime had yet to institutionalize core aspects of its identity project.
To examine the size and effectiveness of these groups, I constructed an event
data set that records antiwar protests in Moscow and St. Petersburg (1994-96). I
have relied upon newspaper accounts as well as antiwar movement press releases
and internal records.574 Though estimating crowd size is an inexact science, I have
relied upon multiple sources and accounts of each event to gauge events correctly. I
have chosen to focus on Moscow and St. Petersburg since they were the heart of the
movement and thus received the most (and most reliable) press coverage. Where
possible, though, I have made note of the connections of these groups to both
smaller cities and to protests and demonstrations that took place in Chechnya itself.
574 Protest movements were well-covered in the media during the Yeltsin era, so the problem of selection effect due to censorship and under-reporting is not severe. This is not the case during the Putin era, however. To be included in the dataset, the demonstration must have been focused specifically on antiwar activities. “Mixed” demonstrations, where many groups protested different issues, are not included. A crowd estimate was required for inclusion in the dataset.
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This research design does have the possible drawback, however, of underestimating
the size of the antiwar movement by excluding less well-covered regions.
Opposition to the war swiftly formed after the December 1994 intervention.
In Moscow, a loose-knit umbrella organization was cobbled together by members of
the Committee for Antiwar Actions (KAD, itself a new organization), KSM, and
Memorial (a human-rights organization). These organizations were joined by
prominent members of the two leading liberal-democratic parties, Russia’s
Democratic Choice and Democratic Russia.575 In St. Petersburg, a similarly quick
reaction was recorded, as another umbrella organization (Committee – “Hands Off
Chechnya!” 576). The group was even more diverse than that found in Moscow, with
members ranging from the KPRF and Russia’s Choice to KSM and the Petersburg
League of Anarchists. We should not overestimate the role of political parties at this
early stage, however. Official endorsements of antiwar protest, with the sole
exception of the liberal Yabloko party, were not forthcoming. Those politicians who
did participate in the formation of these groups as well as subsequent collective
mobilization were almost always operating in a private (non-party) capacity.577
Despite the fractured nature of the antiwar movement, it nonetheless
succeeded in rapidly mobilizing protests. In all, the various members of the
movement managed to organize 23 protests that exceeded 100 participants, or
575 Activists included Sergei Kovalev, Ella Pamfilova, Lev Ponomarev, and Ludmila Vakhina. For accounts of protests in this period, see Emil Pain and Arkadii Popov, “Rossiiskaia politika v Chechne: 4 Vlast’ i obshchestvo na barrikadakh [Russian Policy in Chechen, No.4: Power and Society at the Barricades], Izvestiia 10 February 1995; Viktoria Sharinova, “Pravozashchitniki i sovremennaia Rossiia [Human-rights defenders and contemporary Russia],” Segodnia 17 August 1996; “Esli o voine krichat’ tikho, mozhet uslyshat? [If we scream about war quietly, will we be heard?], Izvestiia 24 February 1995. 576 On 29 January 1995 this Committee was renamed the “Social Committee of International Solidarity – “Hands Off Chechnya!” 577 Democratic Russia did allow its buildings to be used for organizational meetings in St. Petersburg. See “Piter: Khronika aktsii solidarnosti s narodom Chechni [Petersburg: A Chronicle of Solidarity Actions with the Chechen People],” Novoi Svet, December 1994-January 1995. Archived with author.
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slightly over one protest per month (1.1 per month). The protests were divided
almost equally between Moscow and St. Petersburg, with Moscow the venue for 12
of the protests. As Figure 6.2 illustrates, however, the bulk of these protests (83
percent) took place between December 1994 and March 1995, that is, during the
first four months of the war. In other words, demonstrations were occurring at a clip
of one per week, a fact that created the appearance of a dynamic movement capable
of mobilizing a presence in a short period of time that might only grow over time.
These perceptions were aided by the fact that these movements held their rallies in
high-profile – and thus heavy trafficked – locations in each city.
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Figure 6.2 Monthly Antiwar Protest Attendance, 1994-1996 (23 demonstrations)
Table 6.x Monthly Antiwar Protest Attendance, 1994-1996
0
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12000
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The slogans hoisted on banners at these demonstrations offer key evidence
of the microfoundations of the entrapment mechanism at work. These protests
sought to call attention to the glaring inconsistency between Yeltsin’s prior rhetoric,
the expectations it had raised, and the reality of a brutal war in Chechnya. Much was
made, for example, of the space between the regime’s language of democracy and
equal citizenship and the destruction of Grozny. Yeltsin’s speech of 27 December
1994 promising an end to indiscriminate bombing was paired with scenes of a
bombed out and ruined Grozny.578 Slogans sought to highlight the breakdown of
military discipline and the criminal acts of the Russian soldiers as incompatible with
a modern, European democratic state. “Torture in the filtration camps – bring the
butchers to account!,” read one such banner.
Activists also accused the regime of carrying out acts that were more in
keeping with the former Soviet Union, language that reflected the extent to which
the once pro-Yeltsin activists felt betrayed by the regime’s actions.579 The direct
analogy here was to the brutal war in Afghanistan. Slogans such as “War is
Chechnya is the Sister of the War in Afghanistan” and “An end to democracy? No
to a second Afghanistan” worked to conjure images of the prior war and the future
impact that Chechnya would have on Russia’s democracy. More generally, these
activists worked to link the stalled nature of Russian democracy – “Reforms Yes,
War No” – to the Chechen war. That all of these charges were leveled by formerly
578 “Prezident RF zayavil, chto konstitutsionnyi poriadok v Chechne bydet vosstanovlen [The Russian President Announces that Constitutional Order will be Restored in Chechnya],” Krasnaia zvezda 28 December 1994. 579 Additional slogans called for a rejection of Russia’s “imperial course” and for Chechen self-determination. This latter point was a source of tension inside the movement, with some advocating for Chechen independence and others willing only to concede greater autonomy.
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ardent Yeltsin supporters made the claims stick even more dramatically in the eyes
of the Russian public.580
These protests were buttressed with additional tactics designed to exert
pressure on the regime by disseminating information and by keeping the issue front-
and-center. We should note, for example, that Committee-“Hands Off Chechnya!”
managed to print and distribute more than 15,000 leaflets between December 1994
and May 1995 despite inference by authorities and reticent publishers.581 Boris
Nemtsov, then governor of Nizhny Novgorod, arranged for a petition against the
war to be distributed; these efforts resulted in the collection of one million in two
weeks.582 Similarly, a high profile Mothers’ March of Compassion, led by the KSM,
took place in March 1995. At least 100 women actually marched into a ravaged
Grozny to organize a Prisoner-of-War exchange.583 These public demonstrations
served to underscore the fact that the regime’s claims that the “military phase” of
the operation was concluded were false.584
Nonetheless, despite this promising start, the size of protests dwindled over
time. Why? There are a number of possible reasons. First, the ideological fissures
that had been papered over at the outset would ultimately tear the movement apart in
St. Petersburg. In particular, a bitter split between members of the Communist Party
and Russia’s Democratic Choice and smaller movements led to a collapse of the 580 Sergei Kovalev was Yeltsin’s human rights commissioner who publicly resigned in opposition to the Chechen War while experiencing the Russian bombardment in Grozny first-hand. 581 See Novoi Svet, December 1994-January 1995. Now found at http://novsvet.narod.ru/32cechna.htm 582 “Russians Sign Petition Urging Yeltsin to End War,” Interfax, 26 January 1996. See also “Ostanovit’ Voinu v Chechne [How to Stop War in Chechnya],” Izvestiia 1 February 1996 and the open letter “Komu nuzhna voina v Chechne? [Who Needs War in Chechnya?],” Izvestiia 3 February 1996 that was signed by 31 leading intellectuals. 583 “Soldiers’ Mothers Movement Begins March to Grozny,” Associated Press, 25 March 1995. 584 In addition to Yeltsin’s 28 December 1994, see also the announcement issued by the Security Council on 24 January 1995. “Obrashchenie [Announcement],” Krasnaia zvezda, 28 January 1995.
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common “Committee -- Hands Off Chechnya!” front. There would be only one
demonstration in St. Petersburg after March 1995 that exceeded 100 people. Second,
these groups had attained their immediate goal: to push the issue into the public
spotlight and thus onto the political agenda. By January 1995, only 16 percent of
Russians supported the war effort, while a whopping 71 opposed the war.585
Already by March 1995, the government was publicly exploring negotiations,
though it was still doing everything in its power to torpedo them privately. Yet the
Budyonnovsk hostage crisis in June 1995, along with a vote of no confidence by the
Duma, underscored both the military failings of the state and the political danger to
the regime if it persisted.586 The military truce that was in place between June 1995
and December 1995 may have convinced antiwar movements that further
demonstrations were unnecessary.
Again, it is not as though there were no protests occurring after May 1995,
only that they did not make our threshold.587 Though our focus is principally on
demonstrations in Moscow and St. Petersburg, we should also note that high-profile
demonstrations also occurred in Grozny itself. At least eight demonstrations
exceeding 1000 people took place between 29 November 1994 (that is, shortly
before the war began) and 26 July 1996. Two of these demonstrations, on 29
November 1994 and 3-8 February 1996, actually exceeded 10,000 participants, a
size not seen in either Moscow or St. Petersburg. The fact that these demonstrations
took place in a war-zone is especially impressive. Note, too, that it speaks to the
weakness of these protests (in terms of membership size) in Moscow and St.
Petersburg. That protests in a war-zone routinely exceeded participation in the twin
585 McFaul 2001: 258; “The Government Continues to ‘Receive Approving Responses,’” Segodnia 27 December 1994. 586 The vote was 240 in favor of a no-confidence measure, and only 70 against. 587 Committee—Hands Off Chechnya! held a demonstration every Sunday at 1 at Kazanskii Sobor in St. Petersburg until at least May 1995. These demonstrations appear to have been attended by only the most committed activists (average attendance: 25 people).
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cities speaks volumes about the relative size of these movements. Perhaps most
impressive, however, is the 20 December 1994 “March of Peace,” which consisted
of a 100,000 person human chain along (and across) the highway linking Chechnya
and Ingushetia. The March even managed to delay the movement of Russian troops
in the region.588
These movements received support from another actor often overlooked in
the study of regime consolidation: the media. Print media, for example, devoted an
increasing share of attention to events in Chechnya. A content analysis of six
newspapers across two intervals (14-27 December 1994 and 17-21 January 1995)
finds that the percentage of coverage devoted to Chechnya rose sharply from 16
percent of all articles to 25 percent. Anti-Chechen protests also tended to receive
twice as much coverage as statements or acts supporting the war effort.589 Perhaps
most importantly, these newspapers largely converged on Afghanistan as the most
relevant comparison to the war in Chechnya. Indeed, on average references to
Afghanistan or to the repressive acts of the Soviet Union (and even Tsarist Russia)
in the Caucasus constituted the dominant frame in these newspapers.590 Not all
newspapers in the sample echoed the calls of the antiwar camp, of course, and the
official Rossiiskaia gazeta in particular toed the government line. Nonetheless, the
near constant inclusion of photographs of the war in every issue, along with highly
damaging leaks from former Yeltsin administration officials, lent weight to the
protesters’ calls for a negotiated end to the conflict.591
588 “Chechen Protestors Form Human Chain,” Associated Press 20 December 1994. 589 Richter 1998: Section 2.2, Tables 20 and 21. 590 Ibid., Table 24. 591 Leaks by former members of the Kremlin’s Analytic Center also tore holes in the regime’s public rationales for war by exposing the chaotic state of planning and military preparedness on the part of the military and its political leaders. See especially the four-part series by Emil’ Pain and Arkadii Popov, “Rossiiskaia politika v Chechne [Russian Policy in Chechnya]” published in Izvestiia 7-10 February 1995.
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The echo chamber effect of the print media was surpassed, however, by the
role that the television networks played in bringing the war home to Russian living
rooms. Television networks and, in particular, the private network NTV, leveled
scathing broadsides against the regime for its policies in Chechnya.592 Coverage of
the protests on the home front, along with gripping images filmed from the war
itself, proved to be critical to shaping popular opinion. A content analysis of the 13-
27 December 1994 and 16-21 January 1995 period found that among the three main
news programs (Vesti, Segodnia, and Vremia) all but Vremia dedicated 60 percent
or more of their broadcasts to events in Chechnya; Vremia devoted 45 percent and
49 percent, respectively. Antiwar protests and discussions of the effects of the war
on the local population in Chechnya also figured prominently among issues of
discussion.593 The Yeltsin administration initially made little effort to curb the
activities of journalists in Chechnya itself, allowing the media to roam the
battlefield unimpeded by federal forces.594 Journalists even attended press
conferences by various Chechen field commanders, including Dudaev himself. The
regime did eventually clamp down on journalists, but not before it had irretrievably
lost the battle to frame the war.
We should note that, too, that these movements also received a modest
degree of support from existing political parties. As noted above, many, though not
all, leaders of the antiwar movement had some official connection with the leading
democratic parties. Yet if we examine the full universe of protests, we find that only
592 Mickiewicz 1999: 242-61. Leading media outlets even organized their own protest on 5 September 1996. See “It's the only way we can stop the war,” Obshchaia gazeta No.34 (29 August-4 September 1996), 1. 593 Richter 1998: Section 2.2, Table 38. 594 We also should not overlook the dangerous environment that journalists worked within. Between December 1994 and December 1995, for example, 14 journalists were murdered, 30 wounded, 146 held illegally, 66 had equipment destroyed, and 4 disappeared without a trace. See Panfilov and Smirnov, n.d. Available at: http://www.internews.ru/books/infowar/25.html
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series of protests – that taking place during a ten-day period in May 1996 – was
orchestrated mainly by a political party, in this Yabloko, which sponsored a series
of protests in St. Petersburg, Moscow, and at least eight other regional centers. Still,
more than 100 groups participated in this rally, nearly all of them non-politically-
affiliated organizations. Moreover, it is clear from Duma votes in January 1995
about the intervention that the political parties were divided over whether to support
Yeltsin or to condemn the campaign.
Indeed, most parties, including the Democratic Party of Russia and the
Communist Party, were torn over the war. DPR, for example, recorded a split vote,
with 21 percent against the war, 31 percent for it, and 48 percent abstaining. The
KPRF, too, cast a divided vote, with 55 percent voting against intervention, only to
have 83 percent vote for the intervention in a subsequent effort. Perhaps most
significantly, Russia’s Choice, which was staunchly against the war but also
Yeltsin’s “own” party, fractured internally.595 Dozens of deputies defected the party
to side with the President, eventually creating two new pro-Presidential parties,
Rossiya (Russia) and Stabil’nost’ (Stability). That the largest pro-democratic party
was undermined and its members dispersed would have serious consequences for
the party system in general. Here, however, it underscores the fact that while the
antiwar activists did receive some assistance from political parties, they were mainly
responsible for the “push” against Yeltsin. Political parties reflected, rather than
drove, the antiwar movement, at least at the start.
In short, these antiwar groups, despite their small size and limited resources,
were able to mobilize and to pressure the regime into changing its policy. The
weight of prior rhetoric, along with the shadow of electoral defeat if policy was not
brought back into line with public expectations, combined to provide these
595 McFaul 2001: 259. See also Grigorii Yavlinskii, “V raskole demokratov tragedii nyet [There is no tragedy in the split among democrats],” Izvestiia 13 July 1995.
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movements with a powerful entrapment tool. Yet the influence of these movements
extended beyond “merely” forcing a negotiated settlement to the Chechen conflict
and the subsequent withdrawal of Russian forces. The first vote of no confidence,
which the Yeltsin administration barely survived, shook the still-fragile regime. The
pressure these small groups managed to generate also led to sweeping personnel
changes, including the replacement of the Federal Counter-Intelligence Service
(FSK) director Sergei Stepashin, Interior Minister Viktor Yerin, and Deputy Prime
Minister Nikolai Yegorov in June 1995.
Critics may still dispute, however, that these antiwar activists had much, if
anything, to do with Yeltsin’s decision to change course in Chechnya. One still
might argue that it was really the battlefield successes of the Chechens, rather than
the demonstrations, that drove the regime to strike a peace settlement.596 There is no
question that the Chechens, despite being outnumbered, managed to inflict costly
military defeats on an ill-prepared Russian military. Yet there are problems with this
argument. First, it is unclear on the timing of the change. Far from evincing concern
for the soldiers, Yeltsin and the military commanders on the spot continually
escalated their tactics and aims after each setback. Examples here include the siege
of Argun (March 1995), Bamut (1996) and Grozny itself (December 1994 to
February 1995). Moreover, the military was preparing for another offensive as late
as August 1996. This operation was only cancelled when it became apparent to
Yeltsin that an electoral defeat to foes capitalizing on widespread antiwar sentiment
(notably, General Lebed).
Though small, these groups succeeded in the critical task of blame
attribution.597 Their ability to capture media attention and to disseminate
information not only punctured the regime’s official line but also worked to exploit
596 Lieven 1998: 15-16. 597 Javeline 2003: 118.
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the contradiction between its civic language and the realities of war in Chechnya.
The regime was uniquely vulnerable to such a challenge given its own precarious
standing and the unconsolidated nature of its identity project. Indeed, in this “noisy”
phase of politics, a reputation for consistency is a prized possession since it allows a
regime to build and maintain a constant base of support. It appears, then, that these
antiwar groups seized a “first-mover” advantage by framing the war in stark terms, a
frame that was then picked up and carried by the media even after these movements
ceased organizing large-scale protests. Civil society was weak, then, but so too was
the regime, and so a “push” from below, however modest, was sufficient to raise the
fear of a bank run on regime legitimacy. That the bank run could end with either the
electoral removal of Yeltsin or the overthrow of the democratic regime itself was
equally alarming.598
To complete the circle of evidence, however, we need evidence that Yeltsin
and his advisors felt entrapped by these protests. Do we have such evidence? Yes, it
is apparent that the regime was aware of the sharp narrowing of its choice set as the
war dragged on. The counter-mobilization sparked by the Chechen war stands as
one of the best cases – and perhaps the only – of a direct relationship between public
opinion and a policy change in postcommunist Russia.
First, Yeltsin himself recognized that he could not win reelection if he
continued the war. “If I do not withdraw [federal forces from Chechnya],” he noted,
“ I can forget about running in the election.”599 Polling data also recorded a
598 There was even speculation that Lebed’ was planning a coup in the months following the Presidential election. See for example Vitali Tret’iakov, “Rossiia prevratils’ v Afghanistan,” Nezavisimaia gazeta 9 October 1996. 599 Quoted in Oleg Moroz, “Dudaev zhelaet, shtoby Rossiiskim Prezidentom stal ego tovarish po partii [Dudaev wants his Party comrade to become Russian President],” Literaturniia gazeta 20 March 1996. On Yeltsin’s pressing need to conclude an agreement by 30 March 1996, and his willingness to override his generals, see Baturin et al 2001: 653-54. On 31 March, Yeltsin made a televised address calling for a negotiated settlement to the Chechen war.
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precipitous drop in Yeltsin’s personal popularity, with favorable ratings hovering in
the single digits only a few months before the June 1996 election.600 These polling
results acted as a signal from society that continuing the war could impose a
prohibitive cost on the regime (loss of office). As Dmitri Trenin and Aleksei
Malashenko conclude, the Chechen war “truly broke the back of Boris Yeltsin’s
presidency.”601
Second, the regime also adopted measures, albeit belatedly, to control both
the flow of information and the ability of these groups to organize collective action.
In several instances, protests were disrupted by police and movement leaders
detained for hours before being released.602 Politicians who participated in these
demonstrations also faced sanction from the Duma, though these self-styled
“investigations” often went nowhere.603 Most importantly, the regime moved to seal
Chechnya, imposing an information blockade around developments in the region.
Such efforts were only partial and halting, however, as enterprising journalists
managed to penetrate this cordon to broadcast live from the battlefield and Chechen
press conferences. “The battle for public opinion was not lost just now,” a 24
December 1994 Izvestia editorial noted, “it was lost the moment that the authorities
stopped taking public opinion into account.”604 600 Colton 2000: 176-84. 601 Trenin and Malashenko 2004: 1. Counterfactual reasoning is helpful here. If the regime had been more stable, and had enjoyed a greater level of popular support, it may not have launched war in the first place. If it had done so, it is likely that we might have seen a greater persistence to the war effort despite dissatisfaction on the home front. This is arguably why Putin has foresworn any attempt to find a negotiated settlement to the Chechen war and has instead escalated his commitment to a high-gain but high-risk military “solution.” 602 See, for example, “Dissidenti [Dissidents],” Segodnia, 27 December 1994. 603 “Prosecutor-General Asks Duma to Take Action Against Gaidar and Others over Chechnya Rallies,” Interfax 22 December 1994. 604 “Soglasie na Pushkinskoi ploshade [Accord on Pushkin Square],” Izvestiia 24 December 1994. Yeltsin’s first address to the Russian people about Chechnya took place two weeks after the opening of the war (27 December 1994). This conclusion is echoed by the Presidential Administration’s own Analytical Center. See Baturin et al 2000: 666-69. Yeltsin briefly considered imposing censorship but pulled back, pp.669-70.
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Third, the regime’s own Analytical Center was tasked with sampling public
opinion toward the war by conducting regular content analysis of leading
newspapers and television broadcasts. In a move reminiscent of Napoleon III’s
prefecture reports, the Analytical Center’s internal memos reveal that its staff was
highly sensitive to negative trends in popular perceptions of the war.605
Interestingly, at least one former Analytical Center member, Nikolai Petrov, has
argued that these reports were heavily edited by the Center’s leadership to downplay
the extent of popular opposition. If so, then it is clear that the portions of the regime
were simultaneously aware of societal pressure and polluting their own information
about the extent of such opposition.606
Perhaps the most compelling evidence of the regime’s sensitivity to criticism
is provided by its actions after the 1996 presidential election. Having learned its
lessons about the need to insulate the regime from the caprices of public opinion,
Yeltsin and, increasingly, his coterie of “advisors” and oligarchs moved to construct
a “super-presidential” system.607 Though we are accustomed to dating the creation
of a “hybrid” regime to Vladimir Putin’s presidency, many of the first steps toward
a managed democracy occurred on Yeltsin’s watch. Media collusion between the
leading television channels – ORT, RTR, and NTV – to support a Yeltsin candidacy
fueled skepticism about the “impartial” media. A “Law on Assemblies, Meetings,
Processions, Demonstrations and Pickets,” was proposed as early as 28 February
1995 and was eventually adopted on 30 December 1997. This law was the first
attempt by the regime to narrow the legal space for political opposition by imposing
new rules for legitimate protest. Though not rigorously enforced, it would
605 Ibid., pp.620-23, 631, 638, and especially 663-66, 710. See p.648 for recognition of the need to negotiate but to do so “without losing face.” 606 Evangelista 2002: 26fn.96 607 On super-presidentialism, see Shevtsova.1999 and Colton 1995: 144-67.
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nonetheless constitute the legal basis for Putin’s subsequent efforts to close down
avenues of protest.
While the regime had a stable and persistent identity project, it nonetheless
struggled to cement its project in the eyes of the public. It is evident that the regime
was committed to maintaining a consistent identity hierarchy, and that it was
sensitive to public opinion and media criticism. Yet this inability to consolidate the
identity project, as well as initial steps designed to insulate the regime, only
exacerbated the regime’s perceived vulnerability to shocks from below. With no
economic growth to appease would-be critics, the regime was increasingly forced to
look abroad for potential victories to silence a rising chorus of opposition. This was
especially the case after the disastrous Chechen War, which contributed to a further
slide in popular perceptions of regime legitimacy. The result was that foreign policy
became an instrument for scoring gains that might legitimate the regime. What
impact did the regime’s identity project, and the still-precarious nature of the regime
itself, have on Russian grand strategy?
III. “FLOORS” AND “CEILINGS” IN
POSTCOMMUNIST RUSSIAN STRATEGY, 1993-1999
Given the civic-statist dominance of the regime’s identity hierarchy, we can
deduce several hypotheses about the nature and direction of postcommunist Russia’s
strategy. First, the emphasis on civic markers, expectations about being a “normal”
power, and a continued emphasis on integration suggests that we should observe a
Russian strategy characterized as mostly status quo. Sustained efforts to secure for
Russia a place among leading multilateral organizations (the UN, IMF, G8 and the
OSCE) should be evident. Yet the persistent and increasing presence of grievances
in official rhetoric indicates that there will be a “floor” in Russian strategy that
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consists of revisionist acts. And, in light of the increasing number of these
grievances (especially over NATO and American power), this observed “floor”
should be gently sloped upwards over time. Finally, we might witness “spikes” in
the number of revisionist acts observed in a short period time. These spikes might
be due to the fact that some threshold of identity markers and grievances had been
reached or, conversely, that a challenge (whether internal or external) in a sensitive
issue area had forced the regime to act.
To assess the nature of Russian strategy, I compiled an event dataset of daily
Russian foreign policy acts from January 1992 to December 1999. These acts were
then coded along a six-point scale with the following relative weights: strongly pro-
status quo (+10), moderately pro-status quo (+5), and weakly pro-status quo (+1).
The same weights are used for revisionist acts, with strongly anti-status quo (-10),
moderately revisionist (-5) and weakly revisionist (-1) comprising the scale. A more
extensive discussion of these data and coding procedures is provided in Appendix
Two.
A total of 2627 observations are recorded for this period, of which 543, or
almost 21 percent, can be classified as revisionist in nature. The average monthly
score for Russia’s strategic profile is 1.31, indicating that on balance Russian
behavior is weakly pro-status quo. Figure 6.3 records the frequency of revisionist
acts for this period.
310
Figure 6.3. Russia’s Revisionist Behavior, 1992-1999 (N=543)
These data confirm two important observations stated above. First, a hard
“floor” in the number of revisionist acts is present across time. Indeed, the number
of revisionist acts for each six month interval never falls below 20, suggesting an
equilibrium point in Russian strategy. Second, the data records two sharp “spikes”
in the number of revisionist acts. These spikes reflect two important developments:
the run-up to expansion of NATO (January 1995-December 1995), which was
vociferously opposed by Yeltsin, and the crisis with NATO over Kosovo. The
impact of Kosovo is particularly noticeable, with revisionist acts during 1999
averaging 60 per six month interval, or almost three times the floor “baseline.”
Equally important, however, is what happens after these crises. As Figure
6.3 notes, the floor appears to reset itself at a higher level than before the crisis. That
is, over time, the average level of revisionist acts per interval increases noticeably.
This pattern is consistent with the ratchet effect proposed by the argument advanced
in Chapter 2; that is, crises generate expectations that must be matched in the next
sequence of moves, so that revisionist behavior increases over time as the regime
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works to satisfy expectations. This ratchet effect is early evidence that the regime is
sensitive to challenges (either foreign or domestic) and is moving to consolidate its
position with an increasingly assertive, if still modest, foreign policy. Indeed, the
lowest recorded number of revisionist acts after the January-June 1995 “spike” is 26
(July-December 1996), a point already sharply higher than earlier values and a
depth not to be reached until Putin’s era.
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Figure 6.4. Russia’s Strategy in Comparative Perspective, 1992-96.
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Figure 6.5.Russia’s Strategy in Comparative Perspective, 1996-99
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These 543 observations can be broken down further into categories of
revisionist behavior. Type I, which encompasses threats (including the threat to use
military force) that reflect a modest disagreement with some aspect of the existing
status quo, total 200 (or 36 percent of total revisionist observations). Type II
revisionist acts, which span a range of behavior associated with imposing costs (i.e.
sanctions, blockades, breaking relations, and the reduction of aid), actually
outnumber the previous category: 237 observations were recorded here (43 percent).
Finally, Type III revisionist acts – open use of military force short of war – total 106
observations (19 percent). The coding rules for these revisionist types are presented
in Appendix Two.
Though these data are useful for drawing broad trends, it is also helpful to
place Russia’s strategic profile in comparative perspective. How does Russia
compare with other states? Here I compiled a similar dataset for Iraq and for China.
Iraq serves as an example of clearly revisionist state, and so its foreign policy
behavior provides a useful reference point for assessing the depth of Russia’s
revisionist behavior. These comparative profiles are mapped in Figure 6.4 (1992-
June 1996) and Figure 6.5 (July 1996-December 1999). Unsurprisingly, Iraq’s
strategic profile averages a –2.3 per month, putting the aggregate of its foreign
policy acts in the revisionist camp. Moreover, of the 2391 observations recorded
between January 1992 and December 1999, a staggering 1277, or 53 percent, of its
acts can be coded as revisionist.608 Perhaps more surprisingly, however, Russia’s
strategic profile is nearly identical to that of China’s. Indeed, China’s strategy
608 Though this score is high, it suggests that a “purely” revisionist state does not exist since at least some of its aspects of interaction will have a pro-status quo nature. At its lowest point, Iraq’s strategy scored a –7.1 (with –10 the lowest possible score) during December 1998, the same month as the Clinton administration launched its “Desert Fox” campaign against targets in Iraq.
315
scored an average of 1.32 for its monthly degree of pro-status quo orientation. Yet
of the 3083 observations recorded for this period, only 503 (or 16 percent) can be
coded as revisionist in orientation, compared to 21 percent for Russia.
This is a fairly shocking, if not alarming, result, for it suggests that Russia
had a profile marked by greater revisionist behavior than China, which is often
treated as a rising revisionist bent on challenging American regional primacy.609
There are two key observations that can be made here. First, this surprising result
supports the dissertation’s argument that states with sharply different material
capacities can nonetheless have similar strategies if they share similar identity
projects. Second, while our attention was fixated on the more “obvious” threat
posed by China, Russia quietly had a more “challenging” decade. If, on the other
hand, we view China as being socialized into accepting the status quo, then the
picture appears more promising for Russia.610 This would suggest that Russia, while
lagging behind China’s rate of socialization, is nonetheless trending in the right
direction. Still, the gradually rising floor of Russia’s revisionist acts suggests that
this is not the case.
Table 6.9 makes this case even more explicitly. Contrary to popular
expectations, Russia, not China, exhibited a greater total of “deeper” revisionist
challenges. Though Russia’s total number of revisionist acts is only slightly (8
percent) than China’s, Russian challenges cluster at the more severe end of the
revisionist scale. Indeed, Russia far exceeds China’s Type II and Type III totals.
This indicates a much greater willingness not only to brandish military force but to
use it as well, especially in neighboring states such as Tajikistan, Azerbaijan,
Armenia, Georgia, and Moldova.
609 The literature is vast. See for example Ross 2004: 267-304; Shambaugh 2004; Christensen 2001. 610 Johnston 2004: 34-96.
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Table 6.9. Comparative Revisionist Acts, by Type, 1992-1999.
Type of RevisionistChallenge
Russia Iraq China
Type I
200
439
281
Type II 237 193 181 Type III 106 696 41
Total 543 1328 503
The combination of a darkening identity landscape and plummeting
perceptions of regime legitimacy created more than just a chronic revisionist bent to
Russian policy, however. Indeed, the subtle but important shift in identity markers,
along with heightened grievances, in the post-1996 era would leave the regime
uniquely vulnerable to challenges that openly contradicted its project.
Such a crisis would arrive in 1999 in the form of the 72-day NATO air war
against Serbia in Kosovo (April-June 1999). Launched after diplomatic efforts to
stem ethnic cleansing in Kosovo failed, the NATO campaign underscored to
Russian leaders and public alike the apparent marginalization of Russia on the world
stage. Moreover, the campaign, prosecuted without UN imprimatur and undertaken
only two weeks after NATO had officially incorporated Poland, Hungary, and the
Czech Republic, was conducted with little or no input from the Russian side. An
explosive backlash by the Duma and the public, now armed with concrete proof of
the West’s “double standards” and desire to infringe on the sovereignty of the weak
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(and perhaps Russia, too) forced the Yeltsin regime to act. Rhetoric, in fact, became
so heated that Yeltsin himself threatened the use of nuclear weapons.611
The regime had, in effect, painted itself into a corner. Having relied for the
past two years on grievances against NATO, American unipolarity, and Great
Power rhetoric, the regime had created the ideal environment for entrapment to
occur.612 Now faced with a rising crescendo of opposition from all political camps,
the regime was acutely aware of the need to score a visible victory. Yeltsin, in a
classic example of brinkmanship, waited until a settlement had been reached
between NATO and the Serbian government and then “gambled.” Before NATO
peacekeeping forces (KFOR) had moved into position, Yeltsin, on 11-12 June,
ordered a small contingent of Russian soldiers to seize preemptively the airfield at
Slatina in Kosovo as a beachhead for a follow-on Russian airborne force. This
brinkmanship was driven in part by the desire to create “facts on the ground” by
carving out a northern zone for Russian peacekeepers that could be used as evidence
of Russia’s decisiveness and support for the Serb position.613 When asked the
motive behind the gambit, General-Colonel Leonid Ivashov, the commanding
officer, noted simply that it was “for the prestige of our country. Our position had
been seriously undermined in Europe.” Even the soldiers in the unit,” General-
Lieutenant Viktor Zavarzin commented, were aware that “we represented Russia
…Thousands of eyes were upon us.”614
611 Goldgeier and McFaul 2003: 256. For Russian fears of being next, see Arbatov 2000: 13-19 and Morozov, Glushkov and Sharavin 2001: 250-66. 612 For a sample of anti-regime rhetoric, see Black 2000: 143-56. 613 For additional evidence that Yeltsin knew of and approved these plans, see Taylor 2003: 315-17; “General-Polkovnik Leonid Ivashov: Segodnia nash pervyi samolet sudaet v Kosovo [General Leonid Ivashov: Today our First Plane is Embarking for Kosovo]” Komsomol'skaia pravda 26 June 1999. 614 “Khronika zabytovo batal’ona [Chronicle of a Forgotten Battalion],” Komsomol’skaia pravda, 6 July 1999.
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The situation at Slatina airport quickly degenerated, as General Wesley
Clark advocated blocking the airfield with Apache helicopters to prevent Russian
aircraft from landing.615 Romania and Hungary also quickly closed their airspace to
Russian aircraft. Faced with a united front, Yeltsin backed down, abandoning the
forces already at the airfield, who were left without supplies and forced to beg for
food and water from NATO blockading forces. Yeltsin arguably chose not to
escalate for two reasons. First, the Yeltsin regime itself was still at the early stages
of the entrapment cycle, and therefore did not feel compelled to escalate since the
survival of his regime was not yet at stake. This is not to say, however, that backing
down was cost-free. Indeed, Yeltsin incurred the wrath of his senior military
advisors, who had intended to deploy a much larger follow-on force, a decision
almost certainly made by Yeltsin himself. Second, the operation had served its
broader purpose: to create the appearance of action and to redress publicly a
grievance that was widely shared among the Russian populace, namely, that Russia
had been relegated to a lesser position in world politics.
Did the Pristina dash work? As Figure 6.6 demonstrates, there is some
suggestive evidence that the regime scored gains with this micro-gamble. From a
meager 7 percent of respondents agreeing that Russia was headed in the right
direction in January 1999, the number surged to 20 percent by November 1999. This
increase is especially impressive given that it was occurring against the lingering
backdrop of the massive 1998 economic crisis and an invasion of Dagestan by
Shamil Basaeyev in August 1999. To be sure, this increase in popularity also
coincides with the appointment of Vladimir Putin as Prime Minister in August 1999.
It is unclear, however, why this should be so important, since Putin was a virtual
615 Clark 2002: 375-403.
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unknown and the cabinet shuffle was the fourth time in 17 months that the
government had been sacked by Yeltsin.
Source: Nationwide VTsIOM Polls, available at Russiavotes.org
Figure 6.6. A Kosovo “Bounce?” The Up-tick in Yeltsin’s Popularity after the Pristina Dash in 1999
If the gamble was modestly successful, however, it nonetheless had
important consequences for both Russia’s collective identity and subsequent
strategy. The Kosovo crisis may have been the “heat” that fused the existing
hierarchy of identities into place, resulting in the cementing of statist dominance and
a rise in grievances and hostile images of world politics (Prisoners’ Dilemma and
Deadlock). And it is apparent that the choice set for Yeltsin and his successor also
narrowed. Gone, for example, was the prospect of deeper cooperation between
NATO and Russia. Now given evidence that Russia was, once again, outside the
0
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% Answering Yes to the Question, "Is Russia Heading in the Right
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Western club, Yeltsin and his regime now worked to reinforce Russia’s credentials
as a Great Power. Zapad-99, the first major strategic exercise in Russia since 1985,
took place in late 1999 as a way of indicating Russia’s continued relevance. The
operation consisted of repelling a hypothetical Western enemy that engaged in
Kosovo-style campaigns against Belarus and Kaliningrad. It was concluded that
only through the use of tactical nuclear weapons could such an offensive be
halted.616 Such planning, once considered entirely inappropriate for a new age (or, at
least, never publicly flaunted), was now the new measure of the nature of Russian-
Western relations. The Kosovo crisis therefore reset the “floor” of both identity
(higher statist, grievance, and Deadlock scores) and thus set the bar higher for the
next crisis.617
This logic was neatly captured by Leon Furth when reflecting back on the
Kosovo crisis: “One of the things that worried us was whether the political
resentments were cumulative. The model that says that they blustered before and
bought it before works only if you believe that these experiences leave no residue.
On the other hand, if they have progressively poisoned the atmosphere, then the
next incident might be the one that really crosses the threshold.”618
In sum, the “Pristina dash” was a minor, if important, episode of entrapment.
It is important to note that official rhetoric was not simply legitimating a stance
already decided upon. Instead, the rise in statist language and specific grievances
preceded this brinkmanship crisis by as much as two years. Moreover, there is a
sharp increase in NATO and American-centered grievances, and a down-turn in
civic and integration language, in the six months preceding the crisis. This suggests
616 Golts 2004: 127-28. 617 Zimmerman 2002: 196-98 provides evidence that the Kosovo crisis cemented NATO expansion as a key issue among the Russian public. It was, of course, already a pressing issue among the elites. 618 Quoted in Goldgeier and McFaul 2003: 266.
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that (1) the regime had prepared the ground for entrapment by its persistent
commitment to this type of rhetoric and (2) that the sharp rise in rates of occurrence
prior to the conflict had made concessions (or inaction) politically infeasible. The
regime, in other words, had created the ideal conditions for entrapment: official
rhetoric now had sufficient “weight” by virtue of daily repetition to make charges
against it stick, and it had sufficient visibility so that inability to meet popular
expectations would be costly.
CONCLUSION
The Yeltsin regime would leave an indelible imprint on the ideational landscape
in post-communist Russia. After an initial period of uncertainty, the regime’s
identity project assumed a persistent and consistent structure in the post-1996 era. A
mixture of statist and civic markers, the project was also flecked with nationalist,
Soviet, and Eurasian identities, though their salience was much less than that of the
“top tier” identities. Over time, we also observe the formation of a relatively stable
set of grievances and preferences over strategies. In addition, a stable portrayal of
world politics as a mixed Stag Hunt and Prisoners’ Dilemma “game” emerged,
indicating that the regime had some fairly significant reservations about the
prevailing international order. The up-tick in grievances, specifically those
concerning NATO, American unipolarity and, to a lesser extent, prestige grievances,
also reflected a darkening public depiction of the current order. Yet scapegoating
against internal enemies, despite the savageries of the first Chechen War, remained
fairly minimal.
The regime’s project is therefore best characterized as mostly inclusive but
fragmented in nature. Indeed, the continued dominance of civic and statist markers
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suggests that the regime was subject to countervailing pressures at the domestic
level, creating entrapment opportunities for would-be opponents. We can observe
the divergent behavioral expectations associated with these different identities by
noting that different grievances cluster around each of these rhetorical positions.
The difficulty squaring these two impulses can be seen in the persistent presence of
revisionist behavior in what is otherwise a mostly status quo-type strategy. There
was a sense in this era that Russia was joining a broader international community
and, if truth be told, a select group within that society. Frustrated in this endeavor,
however, the regime’s behavior also came to reflect an increased sense of grievance
and difference from the West. The next chapter explores whether Yeltsin’s
successor would remain bound by the same ideational framework or would seek to
construct his own identity architecture.
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7
A New Potemkin Village?
The Instability of Stability in Putin’s Russia, 2000-2004
Мы не злопамятные, но мы злые, и память у нас хорошая.
(We are not vindictive, but we are angry, and we have a good memory).619
Boris Yeltsin’s decision to appoint Vladimir Putin, a virtual political
unknown, as his successor on New Year’s Eve 1999 had fateful consequences for
Russia’s fledgling democracy. In a blizzard of decrees and actions, President Putin
moved to consolidate his grip over “vertical power” (vertikalnaia vlast’) by
eliminating powerful oligarchs, gutting the Federation Council, and imposing
restrictive media practices. These efforts to render Russian political life predictable
would receive a powerful boost in the form of a second war in Chechnya, which
continually generated graphic proof of the apparent need to strengthen the Russian
state and silence dissent.620
Yet while these efforts to construct a semi-authoritarian (“hybrid”) regime
have received much attention, the ideational continuities between the Yeltsin and
Putin eras have been overlooked.621 Indeed, while Russia’s political institutions
have undergone significant change, the basic contours of the Putin regime’s identity
project remain remarkably consistent with those of its predecessor. Shared affinities
for statist and civic identities – often couched in language derided by critics as
“dull” – and a persistent set of grievances suggest that Putin is still working within
619 Dmitri Rogozin, My vernem sebe Rossiiu, 2003, p.18. 620 At least 18 Chechen war-related attacks took place in Russia’s cities during Putin’s first term, including the brutal October 2002 Dubrovka theater hostage crisis. See “Terakty v Rossii 1999-2004gg.,” Nezavisimoe Voennoe Obozrenie (NVO), 3 September 2004. 621 On “hybrid” regimes, see Ottaway 2003; Levitsky and Way 2002; Diamond 2002. Excellent overviews of Putin’s first administration are found in Sakwa 2004; Shevtsova 2003; Medvedev 2002.
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the confines established by the preceding regime. Evolution, not revolution, is thus
the best characterization of Putin’s project.
This is not to imply, however, that the identity project has remained static
over time. There is, for example, substantial evidence of a trend toward a greater
reliance on exclusivist rhetoric to define the political community. Nationalism has,
in particular, come to play a more dominant role in the Putin regime’s identity
hierarchy. Similarly, despite Putin’s personal popularity, the regime has been unable
to consolidate itself fully, with the public’s perceptions of regime legitimacy
hovering at about 40 percent (2000-2004).622 And, much as we observed during
Yeltsin’s tenure, a set of entrenched contradictions at the core of the regime’s
project has led to chronic involvement in revisionist-type behavior over time.
Changes to the strategic landscape, notably the introduction of American bases to
Central Asia, threaten to exacerbate these pre-existing tensions and trends in the
regime’s project.
This chapter applies the same coding framework and sampling criteria for
measuring the Putin-era identity project in official texts (N=424) as employed in the
previous chapter. The chapter’s first section is devoted to an examination of Putin’s
project, both on its own merits and in relation to the Yeltsin-era project. This top-
down perspective is reversed in the chapter’s second section, where a combination
of primary documents, interviews, polling data, and participant observation is used
to examine whether societal opposition can mobilize to entrap the regime. Here, as
in the preceding chapter, we focus on the ability of anti-war movements to protest
the (second) Chechen war, which constitutes a central plank in the regime’s project.
Finally, we analyze how the content and contradictions of the identity project have
shaped the nature of Russian strategy. Both event data and a case study of Russia’s
622 “Is Russia Headed in the Right Direction?” Available at: Russiavotes.org
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response to post-11 September stationing of American forces in Central Asia are
used to assess how identity has guided Russian strategy.
I. EVOLUTION, NOT REVOLUTION: PUTIN’S IDENTITY PROJECT, 2000-2004
To what extent does the Putin regime trace its ideational heritage to the
Yeltsin-era project? Did the project “carry over,” as path dependency would dictate,
or was it cast aside? We turn again to computer-assisted content analysis of
Russian-language official statements, speeches, and press conferences to assess the
degree of continuity across the Yeltsin and Putin administrations (January 2000 to
May 2004). I argue that substantial continuity is indeed present, so much so that we
can confidently view Putin’s project as a continuation, rather than a radical
departure from, that of his predecessor. Statist and civic identities, for example,
remain atop the identity project’s hierarchy in a “liberal-statism” that owes much
not only to Yeltsin but to earlier reformers like Peter Stolypin.623 Public portrayals
of the “game” of world politics, along with the hierarchy of expressed grievances,
are also consistent with the Yeltsin regime’s own rhetoric. Similarly, the Putin
regime has cast integration as its preferred strategy though, like its forerunner, the
regime also notes the utility of non-alignment and defensive military strategies.
Within the confines of this ideational heritage, however, there has been a
shift toward more exclusive conceptions of collective identity. To anticipate the
results of this chapter, there a number of worrisome trends unfolding in the regime’s
rhetoric. Perhaps most importantly, civic markers not only become less frequent
over time but also undergo an important change. Alongside this decline in civic
623 On this point, see Sakwa 2004: 244-45.
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markers is a late surge in nationalist rhetoric during the January-May 2004 period.
This marks the first time that nationalist rhetoric has outweighed civic indicators.
In addition, the coding framework also tracks a pronounced emphasis on
scapegoating at the domestic level. Such rhetoric takes aim not at ethno-religious
minorities, as one might expect, but at the threat posed by international terrorists
and their sympathizers in Russia itself. Finally, we also witness a tighter coupling
between statist identity markers and a broader range of grievances than compared
with either civic markers in the Putin era or statist markers in the Yeltsin era. What
does this mean? It suggests that statist sentiments are not only expressed in terms of
positive attributes but also in the language of grievance – and that the association
between statism and grievance has only grown stronger during Putin’s tenure.
Figure 7.1 records the salience of various identity markers during Putin’s
first term in office. Following Chapter 6, the data records the frequency of
expression for six different identities – civic, statist, nationalist, Eurasian, Soviet,
and Orthodox – within a standard unit of text (1000 words).
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Figure 7.1 Relative Salience of Identity Markers in Putin’s Project,
January 2000 to May 2004
The overall framework of the Putin regime’s identity architecture remains
remarkably consistent with that of the Yeltsin regime. We observe once again the
continued dominance of statist and civic indicators, a continuation of the pattern
established by late 1996 in official rhetoric. Soviet, Eurasian, and Orthodox
indicators remain marginal. Most dramatically, civic indicators plunge in the last
five months of the dataset (see also Table 7.1)
0
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July-Dec2000
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Freq
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CivicStatistNationalistEurasianSovietOrthodox
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Table 7.1 Standardized Frequency of Identity Categories in Official Rhetoric, January 2000 to May 2004 (per 1000 words)
Identity Types Jan-June 2000
July-Dec 2000
Jan-June 2001
July-Dec 2001
Civic 7.34 6.2 4.08 4.52 Statist 9.09 7.12 5.96 6.11
Nationalist 2.27 1.97 1.59 1.83 Eurasian .89 .87 .79 .47
Soviet 1.06 .78 1.35 1.67 Orthodox .44 .33 .16 .50
Identity Types
Jan-June 2002
July-Dec 2002
Jan-June 2003
July-Dec 2003
Jan-May 2004
N
Civic 4.69 4.98 4.33 6.40 1.68 3679 Statist 6.56 5.41 6.96 8.28 8.54 4939
Nationalist 2.35 1.24 1.96 2.24 2.97 1400 Eurasian .91 .66 .83 .83 .82 500
Soviet 1.58 1.13 1.14 1.33 1.38 908 Orthodox .19 .26 .25 .59 1.42 298
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Interestingly, this collapse coincides with the limited campaign season that
preceded the Presidential election in May 2004. Why this sharp decline? It is likely
that the regime elected to downplay civic rhetoric for at least two reasons. First, it is
apparent from voting patterns and poll data that Russian voters are much more
favorably disposed toward calls for stability and order, rather than more abstract
notions of civic equality. This is not to suggest that Russians are anti-democratic;
rather, it is to suggest that Russians may have come to define democracy in terms of
stability, not abstract rights. The regime could therefore minimize such language
without penalty.
Second, and related, it is likely that the regime was being pushed from other
political actors (notably, the rise of other nationalist parties) to incorporate
nationalist language. Yet this explanation on its own is insufficient, for the rise in
nationalist indicators dates at least to December 2002. And, when compared with
Yeltsin-era rhetoric, the frequency of nationalist indicators is higher in relative
terms over the entire length of Putin’s tenure. What we may be witnessing is
identity replacement, in which one marker in the hierarchy is slowly eclipsed by
another. We need to be careful in drawing firm conclusions, however, given that the
apparent collapse of civic markers comes at the end of our dataset. It is unclear, for
example, whether this is one-time “shock” or whether it presages a more
fundamental shift in the composition of the identity project. As we have seen,
rhetoric tends to be sticky, and so it is unlikely that civic markers will disappear
entirely. Yet this “hollowing” of civic content and its replacement with nationalism
threatens to heighten the project’s exclusivity.
Far from being “completely malleable” and a “rationalizing device,” Putin’s
identity project is both persistent and consistent across time.624 The stickiness of
624 See for example Lo 2002: 160.
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rhetoric can especially pose problems if the identities being invoked offer very
different bases for citizen allegiance to the regime. This is true even of identities
that are cast in “gray” or “boring” language since such identities can command
significant societal support.625
Table 7.2 details the range of attributes that cluster around the two dominant
categories, civic and statist identities. On the statist side, we find that three core
ideas are emphasized: (1) the notion of unity (yedinstvo); (2) the effectiveness of the
state, and (3) its Great Power status. Note that these three core ideas were also
expressed by the Yeltsin regime, some variation in the frequency of occurrence
notwithstanding.
Table 7.2 Type and Frequency of Key Attributes for Dominant Identities, 2000-2004
Statist Civic
Attribute Frequency Attribute FrequencyEffective 718 Law-based 992 Developed 667 Citizen 913 Maintain Security 541 Modern 396 Consolidate 447 Freedom 274 Unity 171 Democratic 227 Order 163 Normal 207 Great Power 148 Progressive/Progress 63
What does “unity” mean in this context? Crucially, yedinstvo takes a
rationalistic-bureaucratic cast in official rhetoric and denotes a unity of central
authority rather than of ethnicity or religion. In a seminal turn of phrase, Putin called
for the establishment of a “dictatorship of laws”626 and the strengthening of the
625 For one scathing analysis of Putin’s identity project, see Aleksandr Tsipko, “Pustye klopoty kremlevskogo patriotizma [The Hollow Efforts of Kremlin Patriotism],” Nezavisimaia gazeta, 17 January 2003. 626 President Vladimir Putin, “Speech at a Meeting of Ministry of Justice Colleagues,” 31 January 2000; President Vladimir Putin, “Annual Speech to the Federation Assembly of the RF,” 8 July 2000.
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“strict vertical of executive power.”627 In a further sign of the legal, rather than
ethnic, character of Putin’s appeals for unity, official rhetoric has consistently
rallied for the “consolidation of Russia’s federal system” and the “maintenance of a
united legal space.”628 On the flip side, Putin’s regime has persistently emphasized
the dangers of state disintegration (raspad) and the chaos that would ensue if the
political center were to collapse.629
The second core concept, that of effectiveness or efficiency (effektivnost’),
neatly dovetails with the regime’s promotion of unity. Without this unity, the regime
has maintained, an effective state cannot arise in Russia nor can goals be met.
Largely unnoticed by observers, however, has been how the regime itself defines
this effectiveness: as economic growth (measured in terms of rates of GDP growth
per annum) and in the maintenance of Russia’s Great Power status. The curious (and
curiously normal) repetition of economic data as a benchmark for the regime’s
progress has become almost a ritual hallmark of a Putin press conference.630
Promises of Russia’s “dynamic development for the 21st Century” and the regime’s
constant invocation of Russia’s role as a leading power have arguably established a
readily identifiable standard for regime success. Putin himself has acknowledged
this fact: “The Government is fully equal to the tasks that confront it [here, meeting
627 President Vladimir Putin, “Speech at a Meeting of Directors of Republic, District, and Oblast-level courts,” 24 January 2000. 628 Ibid. 629 President Vladimir Putin, “Transcript of the ‘Direct Line’ with the President (ORT, RTR, NTV),” 24 December 2001; FM Igor Ivanov, “Transcript of an Interview with FM Igor Ivanov on ORT and RTR,” 9 March 2002. 630 37 speeches here, or almost one in ten, make some reference to the current state of Russia’s economic growth (down to the percentage point).For example, see President Vladimir Putin, “Interview with ORT, Japanese Television Company NHK, and Reuters,” 11 July 2000; Vladimir Putin, “Answers to Questions at a Meeting of Representatives of the State Oil-Technical University at Ufa (Bashkortostan),” 4 January 2003.
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annual economic growth projections]. If this result is not reached, then there will be
problems.”631
Great Power rhetoric, a central component of the Yeltsin-era project, is also
a persistent feature of the Putin regime’s rhetoric. Much like earlier rhetoric, the
current regime has focused heavily on Russia’s nuclear weapons and sheer
geographical expanse as evidence of Russia’s Great Power status. A sense that must
carve out its own space, and that it cannot be confined simply to a regional Great
Power role, is also present. “Each of our countries [US and Russia] are Great
Powers,” noted Putin. “Each has its own history and its own economic and
geopolitical interests which cannot always concur.”632 Unlike Yeltsin, however,
Putin is much more likely to emphasize past Soviet military victories such as
Stalingrad as additional justification for Russia’s claims to a privileged role in world
politics.633 And, unlike Yeltsin, Putin is apt to place more weight on Russia’s
economic potential as evidence of Russia’s Greatness. Here, too, economic criteria
are used as evidence not just for Russia’s developed status but also for its inclusion
in the Great Power club. As Putin argued, “we are a rich country of poor people,”634
a fact that could undercut the regime’s derzhavnost’ rhetoric and its standing in the
hierarchy of international society.
While statist rhetoric has remained consistent across regimes, the same is not
true for the civic category of identity. It does retain a dominant position in Putin’s
631 Vladimir Putin, “Stenogram of Answers at a Kremlin Press Conference with Russian and Foreign Journalists,” 20 June 2003. 632 President Vladimir Putin, “Annual Speech to the Federation Assembly of the RF,” 8 July 2000; see also FM Igor Ivanov, “Russia-US: What Kind of Partnership?” Kommersant”, 13 February 2004. 633 “Address to Veterans on the Occasion of Victory Day,” 9 May 2002; “Speech at a Meeting with Veterans,” 9 May 2003. Stalingrad is especially prominent. See, for example, Putin, “Meeting with Veterans of the Great Patriotic War,” 19 August 2003. 634 President Vladimir Putin, “Speech at the Ceremonial Presentation of the Standard of the Federal Border Service of the Russian Federation,” 16 March 2000.
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ideational pantheon until January 2004, when a sharp and unprecedented decline is
recorded. But the content associated with a civic identity has shifted dramatically.
Several traits, once staples of a civic identity, have apparently fallen by the wayside.
These markers include both descriptive traits – a commitment to human rights and
the exchange of opinion, for example – and relational aspects such as “Western.”
Indeed, these markers are almost totally absent from the regime’s official rhetoric,
despite the fact that they were once heavily emphasized by the Yeltsin regime.
Other references, such as claims to being a “normal” state, have experienced a
similar decrease in their salience in official pronouncements.
And, crucially, the entire category is experiencing a crucial shift: the
category is collapsing in on itself, with these seven traits now accounting for 84
percent of all civic references. The seven statist markers, by contrast, account for
only 58 percent of the category’s occurrences. This suggests that the meaning of the
civic category has been compressed to a few stock phrases (“the realization of
constitutional rights and freedoms”), a trend that suggests such language is
becoming ritualistic.635
In other words, while statist rhetoric is diffuse across a broad range of issues
and texts, the use of civic language appears more instrumental, with a narrow set of
markers being used to “prime” an audience. It must be noted, too, that many of these
civic traits are compatible – indeed, support – the regime’s statist rhetoric. An
emphasis on law, for example, or on being a “modern” state, can be seen through
the prism of the regime’s efforts to promote a self-image as united and effective.636
635 “National Security Concept of the Russian Federation,” 10 January 2000; President Vladimir Putin, “Speech at a Meeting with Societal Representatives about the North Caucasus Problem,” 8 November 2000; Vladimir Putin, “Annual Speech to the Federation Assembly of the RF,” 18 April 2002. 636 Here, the emphasis is not necessarily on role identities per se but rather than attributes that a regime would like to claim possession of when constructing a collective identity. In other words, this is an “adjective”-based approach to the study of identity, rather than a strictly “noun” based one.
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Given the sharp increase in the frequency of nationalist language, we must
also examine its content.637 Nationalism is an important indicator that a regime’s
project is assuming an exclusivist cast since such rhetoric by definition excludes
those not included in the nation. The rise of such language is particularly noticeable
if we compare frequency rates across these regimes. In January-June 1993,
nationalist markers were recorded at a rate of .71, a rate that had increased to 1.22
by the end of the Yeltsin administration. By June 2000, however, nationalist scores
had reached 2.27 per standardized unit of text; by May 2004, this score stood at 2.97
occurrences per standardized unit. In other words, the frequency of nationalist
rhetoric has more than quadrupled since 1993.
Despite concern over the role that nationalism has played in sparking
interstate conflict, the type of nationalism found in the Putin regime’s rhetoric has
been diffuse and somewhat vague. Most allusions to nationalism consist principally
of positive statements about Russia’s cultural heritage, the importance of its
language, or its long-standing traditions. These attributes in turn necessitate that
Russia has its own “specifications” (spetsifika) and must therefore pursue its own
development path.638 To date, however, there has been almost no official
endorsement of the idea that Russia has its own Sonderweg that demands isolation
from the world, let alone aggressive expansionist designs.
Not all nationalist allusions are so benign, however. The Putin regime has
rehabilitated the notion of a Motherland (Rodina), a concept imbued with an
ethnically Russian view of identity. Once a staple of Soviet-era propaganda (though
mostly stripped of its ethnic content), Rodina is now used to invoke a standard of
637 It is important to distinguish between patriotism and nationalism, even if the speakers in question do not, because they can generate conflicting imperatives for state behavior (i.e. toward a diaspora). 638 President Vladimir Putin, “Open Letter of Vladimir Putin to the Russian Electorate,” Izvestiia 25 February 2000; Russian Ministry of Defense, “Actual Development Tasks of the Russian Armed Forces,” October 2003.
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collective identity and unity not experienced since the Great Patriotic War.639
Indeed, while Soviet military victories are often cited as evidence of Russia’s
continued Great Power status, the experience of the war years is also relied upon as
an example of collective sacrifice for the good of the Motherland. Here, for
example, is an excerpt from Putin’s address on Victory Day (9 May):
I thank the veterans of the Great Patriotic War. They prevented the country from becoming a colony. They demonstrated that no enemy can break, frighten, or defeat us. And they demonstrated that our Motherland has and will always have an enormous reserve of strength. The 9th of May is the height of our glory. The people will not forget this glorious date. We know the price and the significance of this Victory…Long live the victorious people! Long live Russia!640
To date, however, the use of this imagery has remained a fairly minor aspect
of the overall Putin project. There are only 54 recorded instances of the use of
Rodina, for example, and it is usually only invoked in specific circumstances such
as public holidays and military anniversaries. Still, the term has been slowly but
steadily creeping into more common usage over time. How the regime chooses to
define Rodina, and how often it draws upon the emotional resonance of the concept,
will bear close attention in the future. If the regime does call upon historical
precedent – and especially Soviet wartime propaganda – then Rodina will come to
symbolize an exclusive identity project heavily imbued with ethnically Russian
content.641 The combination of a more exclusive project and the valorizing of 639 President Vladimir Putin, “Interview with the Chief Editors of Komsomolskaia pravda, Izvestiia, Moscow Komsomolets and Trud,” 20 March 2001 and his “Announcement to the Country’s Citizens,” 7 May 2004. 640 “Address to Veterans on the Occasion of Victory Day,” 9 May 2004; “Speech at a Meeting with Veterans,” 9 May 2003; “Speech at a Meeting of the State Council Presidium,” 27 January 2004. 641 On notions of Rodina during the Great Patriotic War, see Brandenburger 2002: 115-82.
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martial prowess might prove combustible, particularly if nationalist markers
continue to outweigh (or replace) civic markers in the regime’s rhetoric.
In a related vein, we are also interested in the evolution of the regime’s
public descriptions of how the “game” of international politics is played. Table 7.3
outlines the frequency of occurrence of four games, ranging from most cooperative
to least cooperative: Harmony (shared community), Stag Hunt (a coordination
game), Prisoners’ Dilemma (where zero-sum rivalries are the norm) and Deadlock
(where states are enemies and survival is paramount.
Table 7.3 Russian Views of the International “Game,” 2000-2004
Games 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004
Harmony 2.53 2.3 2.42 2.75 2.63 1771 (20%) Stag Hunt 5.35 5.24 5.67 5.49 5.54 3840 (44%)Prisoners’ Dilemma 2.21 1.77 2 2.69 1.94 1523 (17%)Deadlock 1.98 2.1 2.46 2.68 1.59 1584 (19%)N 1523 1898 2123 2547 627 8718
Frequency of occurrence per standardized unit of text (1000 words); 2004 is a half-year.
What is immediately apparent from Table 7.3 is that the relative weight
assigned to each “game” has remained almost unchanged from the Yeltsin to the
Putin administration. In the 2000-2004 era, Harmony (20 percent of all references)
and Stag Hunt (44 percent) are clearly dominant. This total matches almost exactly
the 66 percent share garnered by these types of games during Yeltsin’s tenure.
Prisoners’ Dilemma (17 percent) and Deadlock (19 percent) values, by contrast,
remain significantly lower. Only a modest increase in the frequency of Deadlock-
type references on Putin’s watch (19 percent compared to 15 percent) reflect any
significant change. The persistent presence of realpolitik type references suggests,
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however, that we will continue to observe periodic defections from an otherwise
status quo strategy.
Unsurprisingly, many of the references to world politics as either a
“Harmony” or a “Stag Hunt” are concerned with Russia’s role in the joint struggle
against international terrorism.642 The bulk of Harmony-type references center
around Russia’s role as a defender of international society from the common threat
posed by a nebulous and ever-shifting foe, international terrorism. It is particularly
striking to read these statements since they were commonplace well before the
terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001 in New York and Washington. “Russia, to all
appearances,” argued President Putin, “is defending the common borders of Europe
today from the barbarian invasion of international terrorism which is deliberately
and emphatically expanding the axis of its influence from Afghanistan and Central
Asia to the Caucasus and the Balkans.”643 Efforts were also made to link the on-
going struggle in Chechnya to the wider menace of Islamic fundamentalism, as
symbolized by the Taliban in neighboring Afghanistan.644
Prisoners’ Dilemma-type indicators continue to track more traditional
realpolitik concerns. NATO expansion once again figures prominently, though such
statements are couched in restrained language. “Russia remains concerned,” noted
Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov, about the “unproductive line of further Eastern
expansion by the alliance” since it will lead to “negative changes in the European
642 The association between the Stag Hunt and Terrorism categories records is quite high (θ=.262). See, for example, Vladimir Putin, “Opening Address to a Joint Meeting of the Security Council and the State Council Presidium,” 24 February 2004; “Statement at the Meeting of Secretaries of the Security Councils of Members o the Collective Security Treaty Organization,” 18 March 2003. 643 Vladimir Putin, “Speech to the Assembly of the Leaders of Republican, Krai, and Regional Courts,” 24 January 2000; Vladimir Putin, “Speech and Answers during a Press Conference on the Results of High-Level Russia-European Union Talks,” 29 May 2002. 644 For examples see: Vladimir Putin, “Press Conference with Leading Members of Western Media,” 10 November 2001; Vladimir Putin, “Speech and Answers to Questions at a Joint Press Conference with Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien,” 14 February 2002.
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military-strategic landscape that Russia cannot ignore.”645 It is also apparent from
these texts that various individuals within the regime have grasped the basic logic of
the security dilemma. NATO expansion should be resisted, Ivanov argued, because
it will consolidate “a zone of different levels of security in Europe that Russia
cannot accept as anything but against Russia’s interests.”646 Fear that Russia will
consequently be isolated and threatened simultaneously is also expressed in typical
realpolitik rhetoric. “The distinguishing streak of Russian foreign policy is
balancing (sbalansirovat’),” argues Russia’s Foreign Policy Concept. “This is
mandated by the geopolitical position of Russia as a leading Eurasian Power,
demanding a maximal combination of forces in all directions. This conclusion leads
Russia to take responsibility for the maintenance of stability at both the global and
regional level.”647
Deadlock indicators also have a strong association with NATO expansion
(θ=.258). The Deadlock category, for example, records frequent references to the
“mentality of confrontation, of the Cold War” that is thought to exist in Washington
among neo-conservative policymakers.648 An up-tick in Deadlock language is also
recorded during the prelude to the war in Iraq (2002-2003). Yet such measures are
not simply registering Russian acknowledgement of the role of military force in
world politics. Instead, these Deadlock references are tracking complaints that the
United States has once again applied military force for illegitimate purposes (and
against the wrong enemy). “On the majority of key contemporary questions,
Moscow and Washington are divided not in strategic goals but in the means used to
645 Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov, “Russia’s Foreign Policy at the Current Juncture,” Speech at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 13 July 2000. 646 Ibid. 647 Kontseptsiia Vneshnei Politiki Rossiiskoi Federatsii [Foreign Policy Concept of the Russian Federation], 28 June 2000, p.1. 648 “Stenogram of an Interview with FM Igor Ivanov on the Television Program ‘Postscript’ (TVS),” 6 November 2003.
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achieve them,” noted Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov. “Thus, we principally declared
that we did not consider the unilateral action of the US against Iraq legitimate.
Dividing international society, this action weakened the global antiterrorist
coalition.”649 As such, military force is certainly “imaginable” to Russian elites, but
only within the narrow strictures as defined by the international community.
To what extent, then, has the Putin regime positioned itself against the
current international order? As Table 7.4 notes, at first glance the Putin
administration appears to be much less aggrieved than its predecessor. Under Putin,
an average of 576 grievances per year is recorded, only 60 percent that of Yeltsin’s
annual average (988). Much of this drop is due to the regime’s post-11 September
decision to tone down its rhetoric in a bid to reset its relationship with the United
States. Yet this pattern of grievance can be misleading, for the frequency of
occurrence for most of these categories does in fact trend back to pre-11 September
levels or higher by January 2004. In effect, we are capturing adaptation without
acceptance, for the overall hierarchy of grievances is comparable to that of the
preceding regime. Only NATO expansion runs against this trend, with a significant
reduction in NATO-related grievances being recorded (see below). The bulk of the
evidence, however, suggests that the hierarchy of grievance is durable across time.
Putin may have turned down the volume on his public grievances, but the “song” his
regime is singing remains broadly similar to that of Yeltsin.
649 Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov, “Rossii i SshA [Russia and the US],” Izvestiia 26 November 2003; see also Igor Ivanov, “Pered litsom obshchikh vyzovov [In the face of common threats],” Vremia Novostei 24 November 2003.
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Table 7.4 Grievances Against the International System, 2000-2004
Grievance Jan-
June 2000
July-Dec 2000
Jan-June 2001
July-Dec 2001
Jan-June 2002
July-Dec 2002
Jan-June 2003
July-Dec 2003
Jan-May 2004
(%)
NATO .49 .49 .73 .28 .11 .30 .15 .13 .84 251 (10%)
American Unipolarity
.79 .27 .76 .79 .43 .28 .29 .27 .06 374 (15%)
Raw Material Appendage
.76 .94 .68 .82 .96 .39 1.08 1.01 .86 585 (23%)
Domestic Interference
.19 .19 .25 .47 .15 .24 .07 .29 .04 153 (6%)
Prestige .49 .38 .36 .47 .35 .26 .24 .30 .32 266 (10%)
Territorial Integrity
.98 1.29 .78 1.19 .84 1.35 1.07 1.29 1.25 780 (30%)
Russian Diaspora
.25 .32 .31 .22 .28 .28 .22 .19 .26 181 (7%)
N 300 259 325 360 267 261 296 326 196 2590
Rate of occurrence per standardized unit of text (1000 words)
Four of the seven types of grievance tracked by the CATA analysis in the
2000-2004 occur at levels near or identical to the 1993-1999. These grievances
include complaints about unwelcome interference in domestic affairs, prestige
concerns, the issue of territorial integrity, and the fate of the Russian diaspora. The
most significant change from Yeltsin-era to Putin-era rhetoric concerns NATO
expansion, where both occurrence rates and the overall percentage of grievances
represented by NATO have dropped measurably. Under Yeltsin, for example,
NATO expansion constituted 28 percent of all grievances recorded; here, however,
that number has fallen to only 10 percent. Indeed, even though a resurgence of sorts
is recorded in January-May 2004, this frequency of occurrence only matches
grievances levels in 1997 (that is, pre-Kosovo crisis).
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Statements of concern over NATO expansion tend to be couched in
exceedingly modest language. “The movement of NATO military infrastructure to
our borders is, of course, being intensively studied by our specialists,” Putin noted,
“and we are correlating our defense policy and drawing up our policies in the
security sphere.”650 Kosovo is often cited as a precedent-setting action, but much of
the regime’s “NATO talk” takes the form of urging NATO to abide by international
law and the United Nations system.651 As noted above, perhaps the most strident
NATO-related grievance expressed by the Putin regime is the prospect that an
expanded alliance will marginalize Russia in European affairs. As Foreign Minister
Ivanov argued, NATO expansion created a situation where Russia’s “vital interests
will be decided ‘behind [its] back.’”652
If concern over NATO expansion has become more muted, however, the
same cannot be said for grievances against the unipolar nature of the international
system. Statements decrying American hegemony have doubled from 8 percent to
15 percent of all grievances (1993-2004). In addition, with the partial exception of
the January-May 2004 period, occurrence rates of unipolar grievances are equal to
or higher than those expressed during Yeltsin’s tenure. The jump from a .55
frequency rate – recorded during the height of the Kosovo crisis in 1999 – to a .8 in
the opening months of the Putin regime is especially striking. There is no question,
however, that a “honeymoon” period was experienced after 11 September, with a
sharp drop in frequency being recorded. Whether this trend will prove enduring is 650 “Stenogram of an Interview with FM Igor Ivanov (Interfax),” 22 February 2001; “Statement for the Press and Answers to Questions at a Joint Press Conference with German Chancellor Schroeder,” 9 February 2003. 651 Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov, “Speech at the Meeting of the Consultation Council of Federation Subjects on International Connections,” Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 30 January 2001; “Interview with the Minister of Foreign Affairs Igor Ivanov on the Results of Negotiations with NATO General Secretary George Robertson (ORT),” 9 December 2002. 652 “Text of an Interview with Igor Ivanov on the RTR Television Channel,” 20 March 2000. For an especially strident example, see President Vladimir Putin, “Stenogram of the ‘Direct Line’ with the President of Russia,” 19 December 2002.
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an open question. Profound dissatisfaction with American policies in Iraq and, even
more strongly, in Georgia and Central Asia promise to keep the issue front and
center for Russian policymakers.
There are two important subsets of grievances within the unipolar category.
First, the regime has consistently inveighed against the American withdrawal from
the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty. Charges that such actions have created a
“disbalance” in world politics have often been paired with declarations of the need
to maintain a “self-sufficient” nuclear arsenal “down to the smallest component.”653
Interestingly, however, Putin’s regime has worked to downplay the current nature of
the threat posed by the unilateral abrogation of the Treaty by noting that such a
system does not exist (and probably will not for the foreseeable future, if ever).654
Instead, the withdrawal is taken as evidence of a broader trend of an American
effort to impose a diktat on the international system, thereby denying Russia’s status
as a Great Power and nuclear co-equal. As Ivanov noted:
It is clear that there have been attempts to construct a
unipolar world order, based on the diktat of one country or several of the most powerful military and economic powers. They have demonstrated this in the attempt to act unilaterally with coercive methods, at times violating the UN Charter and international norms…But the future will be a multipolar world order.655
653 President Vladimir Putin, “Statement to the State Duma on the Question of START-2,” 14 April 2000. 654 “Stenogram of ORT “Vremia” Television Program,” 22 December 2002; President Vladimir Putin, “Interview with the Chief Correspondents of Leading American Media,” 10 November 2001. 655 Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov, “Interview with Igor Ivanov Published in the Indian Express and throughout Indian Media,” 6 July 2001. “I am absolutely sure that the world will be more predictable and stable only if it is multipolar,” Putin noted in “Statement for the Press and Answers to Questions at a Joint Press Conference with German Chancellor Schroeder,” 9 February 2003.
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Yet the sharpest increase in grievances is associated with the “raw material
appendage” category. Only 11 percent of all grievances during Yeltsin’s tenure,
these complaints about being relegated to the position of a Third World country
account for 23 percent of Putin-era grievances. This increase in overall salience is
also a natural progression from the Yeltsin-era, for frequency of occurrence rates
have increased in a linear fashion across the 1993-2004 period. The category
reflects not only Russian uneasiness with joining the World Trade Organization
(WTO) but also a more generalized sense that Russia’s status hinges on its
economic competitiveness and performance. Concern over the growing inequality of
world politics often meshes in official rhetoric with a desire to see distinctive
national development paths preserved. “Today in the world there are millions of
people who have no gain from globalization, and the distribution of income between
the rich and the poor continues to widen at a rapid rate,” argued the Treaty of
Friendship. “We consider that in conditions of globalization there should be
preserved multiple models of development for states according to their national
specifications (spetsifika).”656
Interestingly, the CATA also tracks a rise in concern over the appearance of
a “new colonialism” in world politics. These references in particular have centered
not around Russia but Iraq, where American policy is being read through a broader
concern with unipolarity. “We are not able to export a capitalist, democratic
revolution [to Iraq]. If we permit ourselves to do this, then the world will become
very dangerous, a slippery path to a never-ending sequence of military conflicts.”657
In sum, there is a danger that the world will become divided into competing “zones
656 “Treaty of Friendship, Neighborliness and Cooperation Between the Russian Federation and the People’s Republic of China,” 16 July 2001. 657 President Vladimir Putin, “Statement and Answers to Questions at the Joint Press Conference After Trilateral Negotiations with Germany and France,” 11 April 2003; “Joint Press Conference with the President of Ukraine Leonid Kuchma,” 23 April 2004.
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of growth” and “zones of stagnation” and that Russia, despite its potential, will find
itself in the latter camp.658
It appears, then, that Putin and his advisors are pursuing what can be
characterized as a “softly, softly” rhetorical strategy: publicly express grievances,
but keep such language muted and below the threshold that might necessitate
actually acting on these statements. Or, put differently, the regime is relying on
expressing a sufficient amount of grievance to assuage the casual public but not
enough to foster the mobilization of the regime’s critics if gaps open between
rhetoric and action. Putin’s short-lived opposition to the Iraq War, in which he made
several public appearances but then let the matter recede from view, may be one
example in a broader pattern. It is unclear, however, if this fine-tuning of regime
rhetoric is in fact sustainable over the longer term.
Also at issue is the question of whether the regime is engaging in domestic
scapegoating. Table 7.5 records the relative frequency of references to four
potential targets, namely, separatists, terrorists, criminal groups, or ethno-religious
agitators. The total number of references is staggering, slightly exceeding that of the
Yeltsin regime (N=2535) in about half the length of time. Much of this increase
reflects the impact of the Chechen War on Russian society, a topic that has received
little scholarly attention to date. Moreover, it is clear that the regime has
concentrated on the threat posed by terrorism as a means of mobilizing public
sentiment. Terrorism accounts for 54 percent of all category occurrences, a
significant increase over the 34 percent recorded during Yeltsin’s tenure. By
contrast, negative statements about the threat of organized crime remains constant at
29 percent for both administrations.659 Surprisingly, negative references to ethnic or
658 President Vladimir Putin, “Speech at a Session of the State Council,” 22 April 2002. 659 In absolute terms, however, references to crime have increased dramatically under Putin (about 1.0) compared with Yeltsin (about .4).
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religious “extremists” dropped to only 14 percent of category occurrences (from 27
percent under Yeltsin). Even more surprisingly, direct mentions of the threat of
separatism are rare, amounting to only four percent of the category.
Table 7.5 Internal Enemies: The New “Wreckers?”
Possible “Others” 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004
Separatists .16 .71 .31 .22 .3 100 (4%)Terrorists 1.08 2.15 2.58 2.43 1.55 1379 (54%)Criminal Groups 1.23 1.22 1.06 .73 .67 711 (28%)Ethno-Religious Agitators .48 .76 .36 .48 .45 362 (14%)N 371 706 713 612 150 2552
Rate of occurrence per standardized unit of text (1000 words); 2004 runs January-May.
The Chechen War once again represents the most likely place to discover the
origins of exclusivist but inward-oriented scapegoating. How has the war been cast
in official rhetoric? Using cosine theta values, we can measure the strength of the
association between references to Chechnya and these four possible frames.660
Interestingly, despite scoring the lowest frequency of the four frames, separatism
and Chechnya have the strongest association (θ=.259). Terrorism records the next
strongest level of association (θ=.156), with ethno-religious (θ=.12) and criminal
groups (θ=.003) showing only very weak association values.
At first glance, then, it appears that the regime has eschewed the use of
ethnic or religious differences as a means of fostering a collective in-group
identity.661 It is possible, however, that the regime’s scapegoating strategy is not
rhetorical in nature but behavioral instead. That is, treatment of Chechen minorities
on Moscow’s streets, to take one example, could reflect institutionalized patterns of
660 I again employ a restrictive standard of a 25 word moving wall. These categories’ tokens must therefore co-occur within a narrow 25 word band in order to be counted by the software program. 661 Ispa-Landa 2003: 305-19 and Russell 2002: 73-95.
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discrimination that the regime is publicly silent on but condones in private. If this is
the case, then a “zone of silence” will exist around this sensitive issue, meaning that
the coding framework employed here will be blind to its occurrence. The problem
lies in determining whether policies of arbitrary detainment are reflections of the
regime’s official stance, local precincts acting on their own initiative, or individual
police detachments abusing their position. Nonetheless, such policies may create the
same effect as rhetorical scapegoating.
Though the regime does not appear to be scapegoating rhetorically along
ethnic lines, it is clear that terrorism has become a key mobilizing tool. This is not to
deny that Russia is faced with a serious security problem, one that extends to
Moscow itself. But there is a concerted effort to make “terrorists” the
postcommunist equivalent of Soviet-era “wreckers:” a nebulous network of actors
both adept at remaining hidden and capable of causing a great deal of damage. Once
a justification for Russia’s policies in Chechnya, the threat of terrorism has now
taken on a logic of its own that is only loosely connected to events in Chechnya. In
fact, the association value between “Chechnya” and “terrorism” is so low precisely
because most of the terrorist references occur independently of the war in Chechnya.
Moreover, the use of the terrorist threat as a rallying cry has the added benefit of not
having to acknowledge the problem of separatism, which might undercut the
regime’s claims about the success of its policy in Chechnya. As such, we see few
overall references to separatism.
Examples of the “terrorism-is-everywhere” claim abound in official rhetoric.
Igor Ivanov has argued, for example, that “there exists today terrorists in different
districts (raiony) and a situation could occur when they pass through the mountains
[i.e. in the Caucasus] to your very own home.”662
662 Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov, “Stenogram of an Interview with Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov and American Television Companies CNN and NBC,” 21 March 2001. See also
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Mercenaries from the “Arab countries” are consistently cited as a menace
that is issuing forth from the Caucasus to blanket Russia.663 There is also a wider
network thought to exist that links Afghanistan, the Caucasus, and the Balkans.664
This struggle against international terrorism is often equated with the struggle
against Fascist forces in World War Two. The analogy is particularly important not
only for the level of threat being conveyed but also for the fact that, if constructed in
this fashion, terrorism becomes Russia’s entry ticket to the ranks of international
society. “In the world, international terrorism has arisen as a new global and
extremely serious danger, ” Putin declared in 2003. “And to confront it we must
unite the forces of all civilized nations.”665
Perhaps most interestingly, there is a very strong association between the
ethno-religious “agitators” category and that of international terrorism (θ=.386).
This implies that the regime may be actively promoting a ethnic or religious
understanding of international terrorism. At least, the regime is using these
categories in such close proximity that the connection would be obvious for any
observer. While it is incorrect to suggest that the Chechen war is being cast in the
rhetoric of ethnic and religious divisions, it is appropriate to conclude that there is
an ethnic-religious “Other” in the shape of international terrorism. It is likely that
Putin is seeking to create, and enforce, solidarity by appealing to a multi-pronged
threat that has roots in Chechnya but that extends beyond that narrow geographical
space. Much as with the rise of nationalist rhetoric, the persistent presence of the President Vladimir Putin, “Announcement in Connection with the Explosion at Pushkin Square,” 9 August 2000. 663 President Vladimir Putin, “Meeting with the Chief Correspondents of the Moscow Bureau of Leading American Media,” 10 November 2001. 664 “Stenogram of an Interview with Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov on Greek State Television,” 8 December 2001. 665 “Statement at the Parade in Honor of the 58th Anniversary of Victory,” 9 May 2003. For similar statements, see President Vladimir Putin, “Stenogram of a Meeting with Cadets of the Margelov Institute for Airborne Forces in Ryzan’,” 29 November 2002; President Vladimir Putin, “Statement Before Plenipotentiaries,” 12 February 2004.
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threat of terrorism therefore drives the regime’s project in a more exclusive
direction.
The final measure for the regime’s identity content centers around the
hierarchy of its expressed preferences over strategies. Table 7.6 records the relative
salience of five different policies: integration, autarky, defensive and offensive
military strategies, and non-alignment.
Table 7.6 Theory of Action: Relative Salience of Preferences Over Strategies, 2000-2004
Strategy 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004
Integration .71 .47 .49 .73 .73 428 (52%) Autarky - .02 .02 .05 - 20 (2%)
Defensive Military Strategies .1 .17 .17 .14 - 93 (11%) Offensive Military Strategies .15 .04 .03 .14 - 58 (7%)
Non-Alignment .5 .25 .25 .26 .5 223 (27%) N 185 159 164 242 72 822
Rate of occurrence per standardized unit of text (1000 words); 2004 runs January-May.
Once again we witness the clear dominance of integration-type strategies (52
percent of all references), followed by non-alignment (27 percent) and defensive
military policies (11 percent). A comparison with Yeltsin-era figures finds that there
has been a slight decrease in favorable mentions of integration (down from 57
percent) and a corresponding increase in favorable views of non-alignment (up from
23 percent under Yeltsin). Defensive military strategies, along with autarky and
offensive military policies, receive nearly identical scores across both regimes.
Perhaps the most notable trend here is the continued and, indeed, increasing,
salience of non-alignment across time. The persistence of such rhetoric suggests that
the regime is still voicing reservations about the pursuit of integration. Yet we find,
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too, that co-occurrences of integration and a “Europe” category have a much higher
degree of association (θ=.363) than with a “Commonwealth of Independent States
(CIS)” category (θ=.142).666 Moreover, both defensive and offensive military
strategies have a stronger degree of association with the “CIS” category than
integration (θ=.215, θ=.146). This ambivalence may be reflected in a foreign policy
that is mostly status quo but that has an important and persistent revisionist
component.
Perhaps the most direct link between an identity project’s content and a
regime’s strategy is the nature of grievances that cluster around each strand of the
project bundle. Table 7.7 presents the relationship between the two dominant
identities, civic and statist, and the strength of the association with nine different
types of grievances.
Table 7.7 Strength of Association Between Identity Type and Grievance
Type (Cosine Theta Values)*
Grievance Civic Statist NATO .32 .448 American Unipolarity .268 .382 Raw Material Appendage .307 .467 Domestic Interference .417 .432 Prestige .489 .501 Territorial Integrity .297 .422 Russian Diaspora .62 .499 Nuclear Weapons .227 .445 Double Standards .551 .557
* 25 word bracket was used.
The pattern of clustering provides important clues into the types of issues
that will compel a regime to defend its standing by closing the gap between rhetoric
and action. As Table 7.7 records, an important shift has taken place in the Putin
666 Here I simply created two categories, Europe and CIS, by placing states (i.e. Spain) and key regional organizations (i.e. OSCE) into their relevant category.
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regime’s rhetoric. Unlike Yeltsin-era rhetoric, where different grievances clustered
with different identities, Putin-era rhetoric is marked by concentration of grievances
around statist language. Indeed, the only grievance where a civic identity possesses
a higher association value than a statist identity is the Russian diaspora in the Near
Abroad. Double standards also remain a “hot button” issue for both identity types;
its theta value is also the highest of any grievance (except for Russian diaspora) in
the hierarchy.
Why is this pattern of grievance distribution important? First, the tighter
coupling between a statist identity and a sense of grievance suggests that the regime
is becoming increasingly sensitive to a broad range of issues. This is especially the
case as civic markers which, on average, have a much lower association with
grievances, decline in relative salience in the identity bundle. In other words, we
may find that the Putin regime is especially sensitive to perceived challenges and
may react by pursuing high-visibility, high-risk strategies to maintain its standing at
home. Second, and related, the theta values for association between statist identity
and grievances are higher across the board under Putin when compared to Yeltsin’s
tenure. This suggests that statism is increasingly being expressed through grievance
(this is what we are against) rather than positive attributes (this is who we are). The
danger is that such a rhetorical stance will limit the regime’s choice set when
confronted with a challenge. Involvement in periodic crises, and a commitment to
escalating them, could characterize Russia’s foreign policy if collective identity
does have the causal impact hypothesized here.
One particular grievance, that of perceived Western hypocrisy, deserves
special note. There is an unusually strong association between the “double
standards” category and that of “terrorism” (θ=.547). Interestingly, while Putin’s
regime has often been accused of brandishing the terrorism card to justify its actions
in Chechnya, the regime is also acutely sensitive to Western charges of Russian
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hypocrisy. As Foreign Minister Ivanov argued, “There exists for some in
Washington a notion of ‘good’ terrorists and ‘bad’ terrorists. That is, bin Laden is a
‘bad’ terrorist, but terrorists who are in Chechnya or the Balkans are probably
‘good’ terrorists. This is a very dangerous logic.”667 Given this complaint, it is likely
that those who foresee deeper US-Russian cooperation in an antiterrorist concert
might be disappointed. As of May 2004, a joint effort against international terrorism
appears to be a narrow – and fragile – reed on which to base cooperation.
To conclude, Putin’s identity project (2000-2004) resembled his
predecessor’s in many key respects, including the overall dominance of civic and
statist markers, the persistence of certain types of grievances, and a proclivity for
integration strategies. This result is to be expected if identities are path dependent;
evolution, not revolution, is the watchword here. Yet the project’s content was not
static, and a number of important changes were observed. First, there was a marked
shift toward a more exclusive understanding of Russian identity. A sharp rise in
nationalist indicators, together with a collapse in civic identity (if perhaps short-
lived), illustrate this trend. Similarly, the use of terrorism, often couched in ethnic
and religious terms, to foster collective mobilization also has the potential to raise
barriers to joining the political community if ethnic minorities are viewed with
suspicion. The tighter coupling of statist identity with a range of grievances is also
worrisome, particularly if this reliance on grievances generates societal pressure for
action. We might therefore expect a state with an exclusive and partly fragmented
identity project to have a higher probability of pursuing a revisionist path. In the
case of postcommunist Russia under Putin, we might expect a continuation of
Yeltsin’s mixed policy of mostly status quo acts but with a certain “floor” of
revisionist behavior. We would expect this floor to increase if the regime is subject
667 Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov, “Stenogram of an Interview with Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov and American Television Companies CNN and NBC,” 21 March 2001.
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to societal pressure to conform to its prior rhetoric and to satisfy popular
expectations generated by its own rhetoric.
II. SOCIETAL OPPOSITION AND THE POPULAR RECEPTION OF PUTIN’S IDENTITY PROJECT, 2000-2004
To what extent did the regime find a receptive audience for its statist-civic
conception of Russian identity? Rudra Sil and Cheng Chen, in one of the few
studies of the regime’s legitimacy, reach a dire conclusion: there has been a “steady
decline in state legitimacy dating back to the mid-1990s” and, as such, legitimacy
now sits at a “low level.”668 To be sure, sorting out the returns accruing to the
regime from its ideational claims rather than, say, returns (if any) from the oil-
revenue fueled economic expansion since 1999 is a difficult task.669 I nonetheless
argue, contra Sil and Chen, that Putin’s project found fairly widespread acceptance
and that partial returns were accruing to the regime by reason of its identity project.
Indeed, the regime has managed to consolidate itself to a much greater
degree than we witnessed under Yeltsin. Many of the key tropes found in Putin’s
rhetoric, for example, found considerable support among the Russian populace. A
January 2004 poll, for example, found that a full 89 percent of respondents favor
some form of patriotic upbringing for Russian youth; 62 percent even favored the
restoration of some form of Soviet-style education.670 Similarly, in a November
2003 poll, 46 percent of those polled answered the question “How would you like
Russia to be perceived in the world as?” with some variant of “Great Power.” By
contrast, one percent of respondents argued that Russia should be seen 668 Sil and Chen 2003: 349, 358. 669 That is, Putin’s regime may be seen as more legitimate not because of agreement with the content of its identity project but because it is now capable of paying pensions and providing basic services. 670 “A Patriotic Upbringing: Words or Deeds?” Public Opinion Foundation (FOM) Report, 5 February 2004. Available at: http://bd.english.fom.ru/report/cat/man/patriotizm/ed040430
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“democratic.”671 As early as 2001, Putin had become identified with a patriotic label
in the public’s mind with a frequency that dwarfed other politicians by a 4:1 ratio.672
Indirect measures also indicate that the project was having some bite.
Favorable perceptions of the current political system, for example, climbed from 39
percent in 2000 to 65 percent in early 2004, a dramatic swing.673 Similarly, when
asked if Russia was going in the right direction, 47 percent answered yes in 2004, a
sharp rise from the 29 percent of January 2000.674 Putin’s own popularity hovered in
near-record territory: his approval rating was at 72 percent in May 2000 and reached
a staggering 76 percent in May 2004.675 Large-scale protest was also minimal,
though we must be careful to note that this at most demonstrates only acquiescence
(or passivity) rather than acceptance of the regime’s project.
Yet the regime had not yet turned the corner on legitimating itself. The
government itself was mostly treated with disdain by Russians in the 2000-2004: its
approval rating was 38 percent in May 2000 and 38 percent in May 2004, a pattern
similar to that found in the Yeltsin era.676 Moreover, absent a party system, or even
effective governance, the regime was vulnerable to challenge since it lacked the
institutions that might cement allegiance on a basis other than Putin’s popularity.
The war in Chechnya, although initially welcomed, grew increasingly unpopular as
success proved elusive while the human and material costs did not. Despite the 671 “Ideal’nii obraz Rossii [Russia’s Ideal Image],” Public Opinion Foundation Poll, 13 November 2003. 672 “Prezidenstvo Putina: Chto bylo? Chto bydet? [Putin’s Presidency: What Was? What Will Be?],” Public Opinion Foundation (FOM) Report, 8 April 2004. Available at: http://bd.fom.ru/report/map/d041424 673 “Trends in the Evaluation of Regimes,” New Russia Barometers (2000-2004). Available at http://www.russiavotes.org The comparable figures for evaluation of the current economic system are 31 percent and 60 percent in 2000 and 2004, respectively. 674 “Do You Think Russia is Going in the Right Direction?” New Russia Barometers (2000-2004). Available at http://www.russiavotes.org 675 “On the Whole, Do You Approve of Putin’s Performance?” Levada-A Poll Data. Available at http://www.russiavotes.org 676 “On the Whole, Do You Approve of the Government’s Performance?” Levada-A Poll Data. Available at http://www.russiavotes.org
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regime’s emphasis on tangible growth rates, economic issues such as agrarian
reform, perceived corruption, and electricity pricing were all sources of popular
discontent.677
Given these potential pockets of discontent, foreign policy remained a
significant tool for the accumulation of “successes” that demonstrate the regime’s
effectiveness. Indeed, foreign policy issues, along with the restoration of military
strength, routinely topped the list of the regime’s accomplishments in public opinion
polls.678 The possibility of decreasing returns if Putin’s popularity was challenged,
or if economic gains stalled, forced the regime to treat foreign policy as an
instrument of identity consolidation.
Putin’s regime in the 2000-2004 therefore marked something of an
equilibrium point. That is, the regime was not a transient point between past and
future, but had actually managed to consolidate itself to a degree that Yeltsin never
enjoyed. Yet the durability of this equilibrium point remained in doubt, as the
regime remained vulnerable to shocks from below. This vulnerability was in turn a
function of the very nature of the Yeltsin-Putin ideational framework, which
entrenched a series of important contradictions in its content. The regime, seeking to
maintain its center of gravity, pursued a two-pronged strategy. The first aspect,
described above, centered around a statist project with increasing nationalist content
as a means of appealing to Russian citizens. Second, the regime moved rapidly to
insulate itself from societal shocks. We next explore how the Putin regime worked
to channel dissent and manage opposition stemming from the second Chechen War.
677 “Reiting dostizhenii i neudach prezidenta [Rating the Accomplishments and Failures of the President],” Public Opinion Foundation (FOM) Poll, 8 April 2004. Available at: http://bd.fom.ru/report/map/d041408 678 “Prezidenstvo Putina: Chto bylo? Chto bydet? [Putin’s Presidency: What Was? What Will Be?],” Public Opinion Foundation (FOM) Report, 8 April 2004. Available at: http://bd.fom.ru/report/map/d041424
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Pocket Protests: Anti-Chechen War Opposition, 2000-2004
Much like other leaders studied here, Putin worked to create a predictable
and stable political system that insulated his regime from the risk of “shocks” from
below.679 And, just like these other leaders, it is likely that such efforts have made
Putin more, rather than less, vulnerable to the dangers of entrapment. With his
regime still weakly institutionalized, Putin and his advisors have struggled to
preserve a democratic façade while simultaneously relying on a host of mechanisms
that actually reduce society’s influence over decision-making. Indeed, even as Putin
maneuvered within the ideational confines established by his predecessor, he has
moved vigorously to reduce the political space available for challenging his
regime’s identity project. The result of these measures is the gradual but steady
separation of the regime from society and, as a result, the heightening of its
vulnerability – but not accountability – to even modest societal challenges.
Rather than accept the prevailing view of Putin as a pragmatic reformer of
Russia’s state capacity, this section instead advances the claim that Putin’s regime is
still struggling to institutionalize its identity project as the basis of its legitimacy.
This, in effect, is the core “reform” still left undone, and the reform on which the
success of all other initiatives hinges. Yet the regime’s continued reliance on
“virtual politics,” along with its steady pollution of its information about societal
attitudes by silencing oppositional voices, is likely to increase the regime’s
sensitivity to perceived challenges. If this trend continues, it is likely that an
increasingly isolated regime will intensify, rather than modify, its efforts to entrench
its particular project. In this case, preserving the illusion of stability will become
679 Here “predictability” refers not simply to the process by which outcomes are obtained but to the nature of the outcomes themselves.
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vital for the regime, further reducing its ability to change course or to shift from its
prior rhetoric. And, as the voices of rivals are muffled, the “spotlight” of public
scrutiny will focus that much more intently on the regime’s own rhetoric and
actions. Given the dominance of statist markers in Putin’s rhetoric, along with the
alarming rise of nationalist indicators, a regime clinging ever more tightly to its
project and sensitive to perceived slights is a less than desirable outcome.
This section is divided into two parts. First, we examine how the first Putin
administration has used both formal and informal measures to channel dissent in a
bid to consolidate his national vision for Russia. These measures include the
creation of Kremlin-sponsored “civic” organizations, the reconstitution of Soviet era
surveillance agencies, and the creation of a “single information space”680 dominated
by the Kremlin. Second, we consider whether opposition can actually mobilize in
the face of such obstacles to challenge the regime’s ideational project. Can
opposition overcome both collective action problems and state-created obstacles to
pressure (let alone entrap) the regime, as suggested by the proposed argument?
To answer this question, we examine how several antiwar movements in
Moscow and St. Petersburg have mobilized despite censorship and routinized
repression to protest against the second Chechen War (September 1999-). These
groups not only provide a window into the microfoundations of the entrapment
mechanism but also illustrate that such pressures can be generated even in the face
of quite severe state-created obstacles. In short, this second war has sparked a quiet
struggle on the streets between competing visions of Russia’s collective identity, a
struggle that offers insights into the sensitivities and vulnerabilities of the Putin
administration.
680 Interview No.18, Media Analyst, Moscow, 22 November 2002.
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“Managing” Democracy: State-Created Obstacles to Collective Opposition
The consolidation of “vertical power” (vertikal’naia vlast’) has been an
overriding ambition of Putin’s first administration. A scant two weeks after
assuming the Presidency in March 2000, Putin issued orders that gutted the Federal
Council, Russia’s parliamentary upper house, by imposing new selection criteria for
its representatives. According to these new rules, Putin, rather than voters of various
regions, selects members, thus making it more difficult for regional leaders to issue
challenges against the federal center. Similarly, Putin and his advisors took this
opportunity to install members of former security agencies – the siloviki – in key
power ministries. Indeed, according to Olga Kryshtanovskaya, the director of the
Russian Academy of Sciences’ Center for Elite Studies, the percentage of
individuals with backgrounds in either the military or Soviet intelligence agencies
has risen sharply under Putin. In 1993, such individuals accounted for 11 percent of
those in government; by 2002, that number had climbed to 33 percent. A staggering
70 percent of officials in Putin’s inner circle are now drawn from these same
ranks.681 This combination of state recentralization and the “silovikization” of
regime elites has in turned generated fears of a creeping authoritarianism,
particularly in light of the persistent weakness of countervailing political parties and
institutions.682
If the state has been strengthened, however, the same cannot be said for
Russian civil society, which remains weak in both absolute and comparative terms.
A June 2001 poll, for example, found that less than five per cent of Russians belong
to a public organization; 73 per cent testified that they would not like to work in
681 Kryshtanovskaya 2002: 162. See also her “Vlast’ tsveta khaki [The Color of Power is Khaki],” Nezavisimaia gazeta, 19 August 2003. 682 On the weakness of Russian political parties, see McFaul 2004: 105-34 and Kitschelt and Smyth 2002: 1228-56.
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such an organization.683 In terms of membership size and absolute numbers,
Russia’s civil society ranks far behind East European countries; it does merit a
higher ranking, however, than the totalitarian countries of Central Asia.684 As weak
as these organizations are, the Putin administration has nonetheless pursued several
measures designed to channel or, failing that, to fragment these movements. A state-
sponsored Civic Forum in November 2001, for example, aimed at once to channel
dissent into appropriate channels and to fragment these movements by dividing their
ranks into “co-opted” and “independent” organizations. The Kremlin has also
created pocket organizations designed to draw support away from existing
environmental and human rights organizations; Green Cross, a Kremlin-financed
alternative to existing environmental movements, is one such example.685
Perhaps the most important of these Kremlin-supported organizations is
Idushchie Vmeste (“Walking Together”), a pro-Putin youth movement that now
claims over 100,000 registered members.686 Founded in 2000, the movement is led
by Vasili Yakemenko, a one-time member of the Putin administration, and is
rumored to be financed and orchestrated by Vladislav Surkov, Putin’s deputy of
presidential administration. In a rare interview, Surkov noted that the group helps
ensure that the government “receives the support of the street,” 687 though he
disavowed any direct role in either funding or assisting it. Indeed, there is little
doubt that the movement provides the Kremlin with substantial street-level presence
and highly visible support for its initiatives, even if the Kremlin does not formally
orchestrate its activities.
683 Public Opinion Foundation (FOM) poll, June 2001, cited in Domrin 2003: 204. The Tenth New Russian Barometer (June-July 2001) finds that 91 percent of respondents are not members of a civic organization. See Rose and Munro 2003: 224. 684 On the weakness of Russian civil society, see McFaul and Treyger 2004: 135-73; Howard 2003; Green 2002: 455-71. 685 Squier 2002: 176-81 and Nikitin and Buchanan 2002. 686 The organization maintains a flashy website at: http://www.idushie.ru 687 “A Talk With Putin’s Inside Man,” Business Week Online, 21 October 2002.
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More specifically, Walking Together has engaged in several campaigns
designed to support Kremlin rhetoric and actions. The movement is adept, for
example, at mobilizing and transporting thousands of its members – often drawn
from poorer areas of large urban centers – for anti-Communist rallies and counter-
demonstrations. Structured along quasi-military lines, Walking Together routinely
holds rallies designed to discredit the Communist Party and its policies and, as such,
operates as a useful instrument for weakening an electoral rival and its alternative
vision for Russia. Walking Together also organizes rallies centered around
mobilizing support for conscripts in Chechnya and, crucially, for the restoration of
patriotic values in Russian society.
Proclaiming a kind of small “n” nationalism, Walking Together has openly
aligned with veterans groups to encourage pride in Russia’s historical – and often
martial – accomplishments. To take one example, a 7 November 2002 “Open
History Lesson” was held in Moscow for the purpose of “recapturing” Russian
history.688 Drawing on Russia’s historical Time of Troubles, the “lesson” was less
than subtle: only a firm leader could pull Russia from its past and, by extension, its
present, Time of Troubles. To reinforce the message, the estimated 15,000 attendees
were treated to a full panoply of speeches, patriotic wartime songs, and a glossy
twenty-page pamphlet detailing how a strong leader was crucial for Russia’s
eventual emergence from its first Time of Trouble.689
688 Personal observation, 7 November 2002, Moscow. “7 Noiabria 1612: Obiazany Pomnit’ – Smutnoe Vremia Gosudarstva Rossiiskovo [7 November 1612: We Are Obliged to Remember the Russian State’s Time of Troubles],” Pamphlet, archived with author. 689 Only the KPRF, with the help of trade unions, can mobilize more people. On 9 May 2004, for example, the KPRF held a rally attended by between 50,000 (the police estimate) and 200,000 (the KPRF estimate) in Moscow for the annual Victory Day holiday. That same day, IM claimed that “tens of thousands” attended its rally. See “Prazdnik: Kommunisty proveli al’ternativnyi parad na tverskoi ulitse [Holiday: Communists Conduct Alternative Parade on Tverskii Street],” Kommersant” (11 May 2004).
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Walking Together, its members clad in distinctive red shirts adorned with
Putin’s face, in effect polices the boundaries of the regime’s project, mobilizing
against individuals or organizations that violate the boundaries of the “appropriate”
vision for Russia. The movement has, for example, targeted specific authors whose
works are deemed “pornographic.” Indeed, Walking Together has organized at least
three “book exchanges” (in January, March, and June 2002) in which novels by
suspect authors such as Vladimir Sorokin, Viktor Pelevin and, of course, Karl Marx,
could be exchanged for a volume of “classic” works. Judging from the
organization’s press releases, these campaigns were less than stunning successes;
while some 6600 books were eventually collected, only a few were actually written
by the targeted authors.690 Finally, the organization has also sought to steal some of
the antiwar movement’s agenda by conducting public food and toy drives for
children in Grozny, Chechnya’s war-ravaged capital. To add weight to the
government’s claims that life has been restored to normal in the restive republic,
Walking Together has sent small band of volunteers to teach Russian in Chechen
schools, to build new toy stores, and to open a Walking Together office.691
Not content to rely on these street-level practices alone, the Putin
administration has also moved to strengthen the ability of its surveillance agencies
to monitor public opinion. Indeed, on 11 March 2003, Putin reversed Yeltsin’s
fragmentation of the KGB and reassembled nearly all of its former powers under the
690 “Obmen knig [Book Exchange],” IM press release (6 February 2002) and “Sorokoviny no Bol’shomy Teatru [Sorokins by the Bolshoi Theater] , IM press release (28 June 2002). The opposition media has dubbed IM the “Putin-Jugend.” For contemporary accounts, see “Khail’ vmeste! [Heil Together!]” Novaia gazeta (23 September 2002) and “Spasiba za sluzhbu [Thank You for Your Service],” Nezavisimaia gazeta – Ex Libris (26 September 2002). 691 See for example “Dedovol’nye idut na vokzal,” Izvestiia (7 May 2002); “Idushchie Vmeste v Groznom: Vyvody i plany [IM in Grozny: Conclusions and Plans]” IM press release (7 March 2003); “My otkryvaem v Chechne detskii mir [We Open a “Children’s World” in Chechnya], IM press release (2 March 2004).
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aegis of the Federal Security Service (FSB).692 This decree, adopted with no Duma
or public debate, established a “super-agency” tasked with domestic surveillance
that is independent of any parliamentary oversight. In brief, the decree meshed the
existing mission and already formidable assets of the FSB with two additional
agencies, the Federal Border Service and the Federal Agency for Government
Communications and Information (FAPSI). The absorption of the Federal Border
Service added a staggering 150,000-200,000 soldiers, complete with tanks and
military aircraft, to the FSB’s existing 80,000 service personnel. Moreover, the FSB,
which already commanded a sizable 9.5 billion ruble ($317 million US) share of
annual revenues, will now receive the 22 billion rubles ($733 million US) once
allotted to the Border Service.
As impressive as these numbers are, however, the real impact of these
reforms lies in the FSB’s acquisition of FAPSI. This agency acts as the Kremlin’s
principal conduit for information about the state of public opinion, a role that has
become increasingly important given the Kremlin’s reliance on state-controlled
media to consolidate its identity project (see below). Though the range of its
capabilities are unknown, it is clear that FAPSI’s staff – some 53,000 strong – is
tasked with conducting surveys and writing analyses of public attitudes. In a
modern-day version of Napoleon III’s prefecture system, FAPSI retains the ability
to conduct polls with sample sizes of 6000 individuals across 60 regions, far in
excess of what other polling agencies can manage. Its budget is reported to be 500
million rubles ($16 million US), though this seems much too low given the known
extent of its roles and capabilities. In addition, FAPSI was also tasked with
encoding government communications and monitoring emails, faxes, and other
692 “Polozhenie o Federal’noy Sluzhbe Bezopastnosti RF No. 960 [State of the Federal Security Service of the RF, Edict No.960]” Rossiiskaia gazeta (15 August 2003), 1. Yeltsin broke the KGB into five different agencies to prevent it from resuming its dominance of Russian society.
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private media. When combined with the FSB’s existing capabilities, this new super-
agency will have the capacity to record both telephone and radio conversations in
Russia and abroad.693
The potential for abuse in such a system is quite clearly high. And while
tracing the behind-the-scenes influence of the FSB is difficult at best, there have
been a numerous instances where it has played a high profile role in shackling
regime opponents even before the 2003 reforms. Most notably, the FSB, along with
the now-disbanded Tax Ministry, has taken the lead in dismantling the financial and
media empires of several leading oligarchs, including Vladimir Gusinskii, Boris
Berezovskii, and now Mikhail Khodorkovskii. More generally, the FSB appears
bent on inculcating a sense of uncertainty, if not fear, among journalists and editors
about the proper boundaries for reporting on sensitive issues. The FSB raided the
office of the newspaper Versiia, for example, and seized computers, the server, and
materials being prepared for story about the inconsistencies in the Kremlin’s
account of the events surrounding the October 2002 hostage crisis.694 Editors from
the independent Novaia gazeta and Berezovskii-funded Nezavisimaia gazeta have
also been called before the FSB to explain their decisions to publish stories that
criticized the Putin administration.695 At least three high-ranking FSB officers,
along with counterparts from the Defense and Interior Ministries, have also been
assigned to senior positions within leading Russian media outlets, including ITAR-
TASS, Mediasoyuz, and the All-Russian Television and Radio Company
693 On FSB reform, see “Silovoi razmen,” Gazeta.ru, 11 March 2003; “Lubyanskii Renessans,” Nezavisimaia gazeta 12 March 2003; “Silivoi priem,” Kommersant”, 12 March 2003; “FAPSI Had Hand in Phone Lines and Polling Centers,” The Moscow Times, 13 March 2003; “FSB vydvihaetsya na pervye roli,” NVO, 17 March 2003 and “KGB v novom oblich’e,” NVO 17 March 2003. 694 “FSB podpisalas’ na ‘Versiyu’” Kommersant”, 4 November 2002. 695 “Ya trebuiu doprosit’…[‘I demand to interrogate…’],” Nezavisimaia gazeta (4 April 2002), 1; “Gromkoe delo [Noisy Affair],” Novaia gazeta (29 September 2003), 1-3.
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(VGTRK).696 Rumors also abound that Interior Ministry officials, perhaps in its
notorious “Department R,” are now intensifying their efforts to monitor the
Internet.697
The centerpiece of the regime’s efforts to manage society, however, has
been the extension of its control over Russian media, particularly television. Soon
after his electoral victory, Putin stripped Vladimir Gusinskii and Boris Berezovskii
of their respective media holdings. Berezovskii, for example, was forced under
threat of tax inspections to sell his blocking share in ORT, one of two all-Russia
television channels, in August 2000. These shares passed in turn to Kremlin-friendly
hands which, when combined with the 49 per-cent the Kremlin already controlled,
gave the state total control of both channels capable of all-Russia broad-casting.
Gusinskii was arrested for tax evasion and forced to sell NTV, Russia’s leading (and
only) critical television channel, to the state-owned Gazprom, after a raid by tax
police on 22 May 2000. By April 2001, a new pro-Kremlin editorial team had been
installed, and leading programs (Itogi) and newspapers (Segodnia) in Gusinskii’s
media were shuttered.
A second purge in January 2003 brought NTV almost completely within the
Kremlin’s orbit. And though much of NTV’s original editorial staff moved to TV-6,
a small Guzinskii outlet, the Kremlin still managed to close down its operations in
January 2002. A third effort to resuscitate NTV, this time in the guise of TV-S, also
met with failure as it was (illegally) declared bankrupt and its frequency reassigned
to a government-run sports channel in June 2003.
696 “FSB na efire [The FSB on the Air],” Novye Izvestiia, 5 June 2002. 697 “Internet sazhaiut pod kolpak [Internet to be Monitored],” Novye Izvestiia, 1 February 2002, 1. The Interior Ministry has categorically denied this, and actual proof is of course scarce. Belief that the Internet could be monitored is, however, commonplace among NGO and media watchdog groups. At least one organization, the Committee for Anti-War Actions, provides its members with encryption technology. This fear is perhaps as effective as actual legislation.
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Television has assumed such prominence in the Kremlin’s creation of a
“single information space” because it the principal means through which Russians
receive their news. As noted above, ORT and RTR, the two channels capable of
being received across Russia, are now both owned by the government. Moreover,
the majority of Russians receive their information through these stations’ nightly
news broadcasts. Almost 80 percent of Russians, for example, report watching the
news three or more times a week.698 By contrast, the newspaper with the widest
circulation, Komsomolskaya Pravda, is read by only 17 percent of the population on
a regular basis.699 The government also retains a monopoly over Russia’s
broadcasting and relay stations; some 80 per cent of all printing presses are also
state-owned.700 It is little wonder, then, that Sergei Yastrzhembskii, presidential aide
and crafter of the Kremlin’s media strategy, could announce by October 2002 that
the administration had tamed the “orgy of free speech”701 that had plagued the
Yeltsin era.
Nowhere was this media dominance more apparent than in the November
2003 Duma and the March 2004 Presidential elections. One content analysis of
primetime news broadcasts between 7 November and 21 November suggests that
the Kremlin had unleashed its media machine on the Communist Party. The ratio of
unfavorable to favorable news stories was 10:1 and 8:1 on ORT and RTR,
respectively.702 Similarly, the Russian Union of Journalists conducted a content
698 “Novostnye teleperedachi [News Television Programs],” FOM Poll (12 February 2004) at: http://bd.fom.ru/report/map/tb040606/ See also Colton and McFaul 2003: 241-42. 699 “SMI – Predpochteniya [Media Preferences],” FOM Poll (26 June 2003), at: http://bdfom.ru/report/map/d032513 The “opposition” paper Kommersant”, by comparison, commands 1 percent of Russian readership, while Ekho Moskva, the leading critical radio station, has a 2 percent share of the Russian audience. 700 Sakwa 2004: 106. See also Belin 2002: 139-59. 701 “Vlast’ pozvolila Kkritiku [The Authorities Permit Criticism],” Izvestiia, 3 October 2002, 4. 702 “Preliminary Results,” OSCE/ODIHR Election Observation Mission (11-25 November 2003), 6-7. Available at: www.osce.org/odihr/elections/ field_activities/2003russia/int2.pdf
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analysis of eight leading newspapers and all three major television networks during
the week of 22-28 February – that is, the week before the election – to track the
percentage of coverage devoted to Putin. The results are staggering, if predictable.
An average of 73 per cent of electoral coverage in newspapers was devoted to Putin;
his closest electoral rival, Sergei Glaz’ev, received a meager three percent. A
captive television audience was similarly treated to the continual drone of Putin-
centered coverage; an average 85 per cent of all electoral coverage was devoted to
Putin. His closest rivals never broke the four percent threshold.703
This information dominance is reinforced by the administration’s
willingness to use the legal system to enforce the bounds of acceptable press
coverage. Journalists and editors of leading opposition newspapers, including
Novaia gazeta, Nezavisimaia gazeta, and the now-defunct Versiia, have all faced
politically motivated lawsuits. These suits often appear under the guise of claims for
“moral damages” caused by allegedly biased or inaccurate reporting. As Table 7.1
illustrates, lawsuits are in fact the most prevalent form of interference that
journalists experience in state-media relations, far outweighing more visible and
heavy-handed tactics like arrests or outright censorship. Moreover, the table neatly
demonstrates how the regime has sought to tighten access to information through
myriad legislative acts such as SORM and proposed measures to limit coverage of
elections and terrorist acts. Though these proposals were ultimately shelved, they
are symptoms of a wider process of information denial at work. The increased
reliance of the Putin regime on such strategies is especially notable when compared
with the Yeltsin administration (see Chapter Six).
703 “Otchet o Pervom Etape Monitoringa Osveshcheniya v SMI vyborov Prezidenta RF” Soyuz Zhurnalistov Rossii, (March 2004), 2, 3. Most curiously, the ostensibly independent channel NTV led the way with the highest share of coverage devoted to Putin.
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Table 7.8 Comparison of State Interference in Journalist Activities, 2000-03.704
Forms of Intimidation 2000 2001 2002 2003
Clear Instances of Censorship 36 25 22 12 Denied Access to Information 196 180 165 109
Forbidden to Publish 48 36 41 97 Forbidden to Broadcast 28 44 43 24
Criminal Proceedings Against Journalist or Editorial Staff
26 44 39 34
Law Suits Initiated Against Journalist or Media Outlet
255 447 410 378
Journalists Detained 15 23 14 22 Total 604 799 734 666
Source. Sluzhba monitoringa Fond zashchity glastnosti (monthly reports), 2000-03.
These formal mechanisms of media control are complemented by informal
Kremlin efforts to limit access and to encourage self-censorship among journalists.
Extensive use of accreditation has been made as a weapon to encourage favorable
press coverage; few journalists have been willing to incur the risk of being tossed
from the coveted Kremlin press pool. Elena Tregubova, a Kommersant” reporter
until her Kremlin pass was revoked, reports multiple instances where her
accreditation, or that of her fellow reporters, was revoked as punishment for
“hostile” articles or unsanctioned questions.705 She also notes several cases of
Kremlin-instigated interference in the publication of her articles; in some instances,
offending articles were scrapped.706
Alexei Gromov, Putin’s press secretary, has also implemented informal rules
that govern press relations with Putin and leading administration officials. The 704 The totals presented here focus solely on state interference in journalist activities. If all forms of interference are recorded (regardless of their origins), then the annual totals rise to 1219 (2000), 1287 (2001), 1413 (2002), and 1119 (2003). Quite clearly, journalists face a daunting environment in Putin’s Russia. See Narusheniya Prava Zhurnalistov, Center for Journalism in Extreme Circumstances, annual reports, for alternative, though less comprehensive, indicators. http://www.cjes.ru/monitoring/?country_id=1&year=2000 705 Tregubova 2003: 197-98, 246, 265, 333-35. 706 Ibid., 226-27, 279, 368-70.
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Kremlin, for example, retains the right to exclude any “client” from its facilities
without explanation, while all questions for the President or his officials are to be
cleared with Gromov beforehand.707 “In this manner,” Tregubova concludes, “Putin
is creating a hand-fed press.”708
Self-censorship is also actively encouraged by the Kremlin as a means for
retaining employment. For example, there is a shared understanding among
journalists and their editors that certain topics are clearly “off-limits.” These issues
include not only the war in Chechnya (see below) but also extend to corruption in
Putin’s administration, his family life, and issues of national security, broadly
defined.709 The Press Ministry under Mikhail Lesin’s leadership has in particular
worked aggressively to clamp down on “rogue” journalism. One notable example of
this quiet coercion is the use of informal guidelines, drafted after the October 2002
hostage crisis at the Dubrovka Theater, to restrict the coverage of terrorism.710 The
penalties for stepping outside these boundaries are also clear to journalists: the arrest
and criminal sentencing of a number of activists, researchers, and journalists
including Aleksandr Nikitin, Igor Sutyagin, and Andrei Babitskii, has had a chilling
effect. High levels of violence – both actual and threatened – against journalists
reinforce this self-censoring tendency.711 707 Ibid., 274-76. 708 Ibid., 276. 709 Journalists report the existence of a particular idiomatic phrase – “You’re a smart person” (Vy zhe umnyi chelovek) – that is commonly used by editors (and others) to dissuade a reporter from pursuing a certain story. What is striking is not only the implied threat but also its widespread currency among journalists. Interview No.13, Journalist, 3 November 2002. See also “Ekho svobody slova [The Echo of Free Speech],” Nezavisimaia gazeta (17 October 2003). 710 See “Metodicheskie rekomendatsii po osveshcheniiu v SMI chrezvychainykh situatsii… [Systematic recommendations about media coverage of emergency situations…]” Rossiiskaia gazeta, 5 November 2002. 711 In 2003 alone 10 journalists were killed; three disappeared; and 120 threats of violence were issued against journalists and editors. It is unclear what percentage, if any, of these deaths and threats should be attributed to representatives of the regime. Sluzhba monitoringa Fond zashchity glastnosti 2003 g. Available at: http://www.gdf.ru/monitor/2003/2003.shtml
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Counter-Mobilization: Chechnya and Antiwar Protests, 2000-2004
At first glance, such measures appear to complicate, if not dampen
completely, prospects for the mobilization of opposition to the regime and its
policies. This would seem especially true of protests against the current Chechen
War, where the full weight of the Kremlin’s media machine has been brought to
bear. This second round of the bloody war in Chechnya was launched by Putin in
September 1999 in the wake of an August invasion of Dagestan by a militant faction
of Chechen boyeviki (fighters). Indeed, the destruction of four apartment complexes
in Moscow and other cities – blamed on Chechen “bandits” – provided Putin with a
surge of popular support for his military campaign.712 Having learned from
Yeltsin’s earlier failures, Putin and his advisors moved swiftly to impose total
control over war information. A media center, Rosinformatsentr, was established
and directed by Yastrzhembskii to act as the central conduit for the distribution of
news to journalists. Unlike the first war, where journalists roamed the battlefield
freely, the military now only allows access to favored journalists through military-
led show tours.713 Even questions of Russian casualties or the cost of the war itself
are difficult to answer given the administration’s penchant for minimizing the true
extent of the war effort. Journalists, too, are actively discouraged from exploring
712 On the origins of the second Chechen war, see Trenin, Malashenko and Lieven 2004; Lanskoy 2003; 185-205; Evangelista 2002: 63-85. For an argument that the FSB, and not Chechen militants, destroyed the apartment buildings, see Litvinenko and Felshtinskii 2004. 713 Konovalov 2002: 40-62 and Sedov 2002: 87-99. Even mail from soldiers serving in Chechnya has been subject to delays extreme even by Russian standards. See “Polevaya pochta derzhit v strakhe tysyachi liudei [Field mail holds thousands in fear],” Nezavisimoe voennoe obozrenie, 28 February 2003. On the relative neglect of Chechnya in the print media, see “Rossiiskie informatsionnye grabli [Russian Information Hooks]” Nezavisimaia gazeta, 23 April 2003. On the information blockade, see Panfilov, “Proval informatsionnoi politike v Chechne [The Failure of Information Policy in Chechnya]” Nezavisimaia gazeta 11 August 2003.
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such topics: “if someone publishes such things,” in the words of one journalist,
“problems will be waiting for him.”714
Indeed, some Western scholars have argued that this information blockade is
so restrictive that it can explain why Russians are indifferent to severe human rights
violations in Chechnya: absent media coverage, the public is literally blind to such
abuses.715 By extension, if the horrors of “mop-up” operations (zachistki) are left
unreported, then the regime is able to conduct the war without public interference or
scrutiny. As a result, the regime is in fact able to reap the benefits from
“successfully” prosecuting a war framed as an anti-terrorist campaign.
Such concerns, though understandable, are nonetheless misplaced, for
Kremlin’s reach is neither so extensive nor so effective that alternative sources of
information are entirely absent. While it is true that state-run television news does
reflect the “official line,” this is far from the only source through which citizens can
acquire information. Some newspapers, notably Novaia gazeta and Nezavisimaia
gazeta, still write frequently about Chechnya, and a leading radio station, Echo
Moskva, also provides detailed coverage.716 Moreover, both scholarly works and
memoirs of (Russian) participants of the war(s) are widely available in bookstores
and at street stalls. Novels detailing various aspects of both Chechen wars have been
national bestsellers and prize-winners, while a young generation of writers is now
714 Interview No.13, Journalist, 3 November 2002. Perhaps the best account of estimated casualties suffered by soldiers (12,000) and civilians (40,000) across the two wars is found in “Nepravitel’stvennyi doklad [Non-governmental document],” Novaia gazeta, 8 September 2003, 12-13. I thank Matthew Evangelista for pointing me to this document. Two attempts to gauge the cost of the war are “Skol’ko stoit den’ voini v Chechne? [How Much Does a Day of War in Chechnya Cost?]” Novaia gazeta, 18 November 2002 and “Chechnya oboshlas’ bydzhety v 100 Mlrd. dollarov [Chechnya Costs the Budget $100 Billion Dollars]” Novaia gazeta, 14 April 2003, 2-3. 715 Gerber and Mendelson 2002: 299-303. 716 Admittedly, the circulation for Nezavisimaia gazeta and Novaia gazeta is fairly small, some 50,000 and 135,000 (in Moscow, twice a week), respectively. These papers also have an incentive to inflate their circulation totals to increase advertising revenues, though this may be offset by existing social networks centered around newspaper sharing.
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turning to related social issues such as avoiding the draft and the dreaded hazing
rituals (dedovshchina) of the Russian army.717 Ironically, Chechnya is also the
backdrop of popular post-Soviet films as well as the most popular action programs
(Spetsnaz, Brigada, Muzhskaia rabota) and documentaries (Chest’ Imeiu – I have
the honor) that air daily on “censored” state channels.718 Themes of loss in the
Chechen war have even appeared in popular music.719
Perhaps most importantly, the tens of thousands of conscripts, police
officers, and contract soldiers who have served in Chechnya and then returned home
constitute an invaluable and widespread network for sharing information with
families and friends.720 Disabled veterans who beg in metro stations or at popular
destinations such as Moscow’s enormous Luzhniki marketplace also represent a
grim daily reminder of the war unfolding in the restive republic.
Given all of these sources of information, it is simply incorrect to maintain
that Russians remain ignorant of the nature of the Chechen war. Indeed, support for
the war itself has steadily declined over time, suggesting that Russians do in fact
717 For prize-winning fiction, see Kiril’chenko 2003: 89-94; Prokhanov 2002a, 2002b. For a review of emerging young writers (all under 25), see “Voina molodykh [War of the Young],” Literaturniia gazeta, 13 August 2003, 7. For memoirs and non-fiction, see for example: Politkovskaya 2002; Kulikov 2002; Tishkov 2001. 718 These films include Brat (Brother); Kavkazskii plennik (Prisoner of the Mountains); and Blokpost (The Checkpoint). See also Larsen 2003: 504-10 and “Chest’ Imeiu: Serial o Chechenskoi Voine, osnovannyi na real’nyakh sobitiyakh [I have the honor: Serial about the Chechen War is Based on Real Events],” Nezavisimaia gazeta (2 April 2004). 719 See for example Liube’s “Davai za…[Here’s to…]” and Zamsha’s “Moia Chechnya [My Chechnya].” 720 One random poll of public attitudes toward the military finds that 30 percent of respondents had served in the military and another 52 percent had relatives who had served. “The Army – a Man’s Destiny?” FOM Poll (3 October 2002). The issue of returning conscripts and their reintegration into society has been ignored by scholars. Yet, according to one estimate, there are 300,000 soldiers based in and around Chechnya, with a further 100,000 Interior Ministry troops also present. See “Voiska iz Chechni poka ne vyvodya [Troops are not yet leaving Chechnya],” Nezavisimaia gazeta, 20 October 2003, 9. Another estimate suggests that there are more than 60,000 soldiers in and around Chechnya. See “Basaevskii proryv [Basayaev’s Break-out],” Nezavisimaia gazeta 23 June 2004.
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appreciate the nature of the conflict.721 And, perhaps unsurprisingly, the percentage
of Russians expressing a desire to serve in the military has also plummeted.722
Clearly, then, the average Russian citizen has, if he wants, some ability to exploit
the holes in the regime’s censorship network. We may question the veracity of
some, or even most, of this information, but we cannot conclude that the regime has
managed to erect a totalitarian-like grip over this critical issue.
The somewhat porous nature of this information blockade poses a dilemma
for the regime. Having invested significant resources in fighting and framing the
war, the regime has staked a considerable portion of its political capital in achieving
success in Chechnya. Given that Putin rose from political obscurity largely on the
strength of his Chechen policy, the war has the potential of generating significant
returns for the regime if its policy remains a success in the eyes of the public. Yet if
the issue of Chechnya can keep his regime afloat, it also can sink it if public opinion
shifts significantly in an antiwar direction. This is especially likely if latent
discontent can be harnessed by antiwar groups that are capable of mobilizing in the
face of serious obstacles to force a policy change – or a change of government itself.
So the question becomes: can antiwar opposition actually mobilize in
the context of a “managed” democracy? In fact, small but vocal antiwar movements
emerged in Moscow as early as December 1999 and were mirrored in St.
Petersburg, Ryzan’, and Ekaterinburg (among others) shortly thereafter. By January
2001, an umbrella organization, Common Action, had been created to coordinate
721 “Glas Naroda Novodit na Razmyshleniya [The Voice of the People Turns to Reflection],” Nezavisimoe voennoe obozrenie 4 April 2003. 722 A full 77 percent of respondents in 2004 now report that they do not want their family members or relatives to serve in the military; this figure was as high as 84 percent in 1998. See “Press-Vypusk #21: Rossiyane ne khotyat, chtoby ikh rodstevenniki slzhili v armii [Press Release #21: Russians Don’t Want Their Relatives to Serve in the Army”], Levada-A Poll (20 February 2004). Available at http://www.levada.ru/press/2004022001.print.html
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actions among some 300 different antiwar and human rights groups.723 Here I detail
how Common Action and some of its most active member organizations – including
the Committee for Anti-War Actions (KAD), the Antimilitarist Radical Association
(ARA),724 the Anti-War Club (AK), and the Antiwar Committee – have challenged
regime rhetoric and policies in Chechnya.725 These organizations serve as a “least
likely” case for the entrapment mechanism: if groups can form and mobilize under
conditions of strict censorship and bureaucratic obstacles, then it likely that barriers
to mobilization are more easily overcome in other, less sensitive, areas.726
To flesh out the activities of these various organizations, I draw on multiple
sources, including: internal organization records; press releases and materials
written by these organizations for distribution; interviews; and participant
observation of protests and demonstrations in Moscow (September 2002 to February
2003) and St. Petersburg (September to December 2001).727 These resources
provide a glimpse into how these organizations circumvent, subvert or overcome
hurdles in their path to challenge the regime’s identity project. In particular, these
materials enable us to trace how these groups use the regime’s own rhetoric, and the
contradictions within it, as a weapon for the mobilization of public outrage. In
723 Common Action would become the “Russian All-National Committee for the Cessation of War and the Establishment of Peace in the Chechen Republic” in November 2002. In addition to those listed, key members include Soldiers’ Mothers; For Human Rights; the Sakharov Museum; Memorial. SPS and Yabloko, including its youth-wing, became active members after their dismal showing in the 2003 Duma elections. 724 This organization also goes by the name “Transnational Radical Party.” 725 Antiwar movements have almost virtually ignored in the study of postcommunist Russia, with the limited exception of the Committee of Soldiers’ Mothers (KSM). On KSM, see Sperling 2003: 235-53; Mendelson 2002: 39-69; Vallance 2000: 109-28. For a key study of the obstacles facing women’s organizations, including CSM, see Henderson 2003: 29-62. KSM maintains its own hour-long demonstration every Thursday in St. Petersburg and will not be studied here. 726 Eckstein 1975: 119-20. 727 Activities are often debated and coordinated through internet list-serves. I am a member of a key list-serve but will not quote from it directly to preserve the anonymity of its 50+ members.
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effect, these materials capture the dynamic of entrapment at its microfoundations;
that is, at the level of the street protest or the organizational meeting.
These organizations were initially slow to form in response to the outbreak
of the second war. Initial reports from the battlefield spoke of glowing Russian
military victories, suggesting that opposition would be both unnecessary and
pointless. Ties among activists had also fallen into disuse during the three year
ceasefire that separated the wars. Many activists who had protested during the first
Chechen war chose not to do so this time, due in part to the conviction that military
action was a legitimate response to the terrorist bombings of apartment buildings in
August and September 1999. Indeed, by one count only seven of the original thirty
members of the Committee for Antiwar Actions actually returned to protest.728
Problems of coordination also existed, as numerous small groups, all pursuing
different agendas and tactics, emerged.
By December 1999, however, the Committee for Anti-War Actions and the
ARA had taken the lead in organizing small-scale actions in Moscow. In St.
Petersburg, protests coordinated by the Antiwar Committee began in March 2000
and featured an eclectic array of members drawn from the Petersburg League of
Anarchists, “Punk-Revival,” and Workers’ Democracy, among others. Such protests
only really gathered momentum after initial victories on the battlefield were
replaced by the grinding of a bloody counterinsurgency campaign.
Protest against the war has generally taken two distinct forms: (1) weekly
vigils in symbolic locations and (2) large-scale antiwar rallies. Sanctioned weekly
vigils, for example, have been held continuously in both Moscow and St. Petersburg
as a means to raise the profile of both the groups and the issue of the war itself. In
Moscow, the Committee for Anti-War Actions organized the first vigil on 30
728 Interview No.29, Antiwar Activist, 7 December 2002, and subsequent correspondence.
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December 1999; these vigils have, with only two exceptions, been held every
Thursday evening since at Pushkin Square.729 Similarly, these vigils have been held
in St. Petersburg every Sunday since 19 March 2000 at the busy corner of Maliia
Konyushennaia Street and Nevskii Prospect. Both sites are marked by steady flows
of pedestrian traffic and highly symbolic meaning: Pushkin Square was the site of
the first protests against the 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia, while the St.
Petersburg protest is near the Kazan Cathedral and the old Russian General Staff
headquarters.730
Internal records, interviews, and personal observations all confirm that these
meetings are sparsely attended, especially during winter, and are largely the work of
a dedicated core of activists. Attendance at the Pushkin Square vigils averaged 14
people between October 2003 and May 2004, for example, while similar events in
St. Petersburg drew a slightly higher average of 18 individuals.731
These meetings are authorized by local metropolitan authorities on a weekly
basis; these permits sharply outline the approved location and the time when the
meeting must start and stop (no more than two hours). Permission can also be
revoked at any point for actions deemed inconsistent with the stated purpose of the
demonstration; agitation for political candidates, for example, is strictly prohibited.
Though small, these pickets act, in the words of one attendee, as “a small flag
[waved] in the face of the general populace.”732 Designed to demonstrate that “the
729 These two exceptions were: (1) during the October 2002 hostage crisis, when the meeting was forcibly disbanded and (2) in March 2004, when the demonstrators’ permit was revoked by Moscow’s Central Administrative Rayon. 730 Pushkin himself is often identified as the “moral center” of Russia. 731 Indeed, the largest vigil I observed between September 2002 and February 2003 had 20 participants. The slightly higher figure in St. Petersburg is attributable to the large number of organizations that, while possessing disparate agendas, nonetheless also share the same demonstration permit. These groups include: the Petersburg League of Anarchists, “Punk-Revival,” Democratic Russia, the Yabloko Youth League, and Workers’ Democracy. 732 Interview No.30, Antiwar Activist, 7 December 2002. For two, not entirely sympathetic, depictions of these pickets, see “Razlom v golovakh [Break-up at the Head],” Novaia
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emperor has no clothes,” the pickets make use of large placards that call attention to
the failings of Putin’s Chechen policy. Photographs portraying scenes from a
devastated Grozny, Chechnya’s capital, are also prominent. Despite their small size,
these demonstrations are marked by a constant police (militiziia) presence. These
officers, usually three in number, are tasked with ensuring that the picket does not
stray from its stated intentions, that it starts and stops at the appointed time, and that
the demonstrators themselves are protected from violence, whether from bystanders
or rival movements (but see below).733
These groups have also tried to apply pressure to the Putin administration
through large-scale rallies. Such demonstrations have, however, been fairly rare.
Since 2000, Common Action and its affiliates have managed to hold only 34 antiwar
rallies attended by more than 100 people.734 Indeed, only seven of these rallies
exceeded 1000 individuals (see Table 7.2).735 All but four of these protests took
place in Moscow, though these rallies were usually accompanied by similar, if
smaller, events in St. Petersburg, Rzyan', and Ekaterinburg. The demonstrations are
timed to coincide with public holidays or symbolic dates such as 23 February
(Defenders of the Motherland Day, as well as the anniversary of Stalin’s deportation
of Chechens), 12 June (Russia Day) and 12 December (Constitution Day). In some
cases, these demonstrations were attended by no less than twenty different
organizations, a fact that tends to confirm that each group remains fairly small. gazeta, 7 May 2001 and “Razlom v golovakh-2 [Break-up at the head],” Novaia gazeta 29 April 2002. 733 In St. Petersburg, the militiziia has taken to video-tapping these pickets, ostensibly because they attract a fairly high proportion of young demonstrators (unlike in Moscow) that are affiliated with anarchic or Trotskyite movements. 734 The use of 100 people as the cutoff for inclusion is arbitrary but follows Beissinger 2002: 464. It should be noted that these groups are capable of organizing simultaneous demonstrations in multiple cities (including some abroad), even if these protests are not large enough for inclusion here. 735 These data are gathered from internal records of ARA, AK, KAD, and various press releases. Where possible, I have confirmed participation size – an inexact science – with newspaper accounts, though coverage is sporadic.
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Attendance at these demonstrations has increased, albeit slowly, over time: all of the
1000+ rallies have taken place in either 2003 or the first six months of 2004, with
one exception.736
736 This increase is perhaps due in large measure to the participation of SPS and Yabloko, now searching for ways to stay relevant given the loss of all of their Duma seats in the 2003 election.
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Figure 7.2 Monthly Anti-Chechen War Protest Attendance, 1999-2004 (34 demonstrations)
Table 7.2 Monthly Antiwar Protest Attendance, October 1999 to May 2004
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Though these demonstrations remain small, organizers seek to use this
legally sanctioned space to pressure the regime to abandon its Chechen policy by
turning the regime's rhetoric against itself. Here we see the microfoundations of
entrapment: small groups, wielding the regime's justifications for war, have
identified a pressure point at which the regime perceives itself as vulnerable.
Slogans and banners hoisted at these rallies offer clear evidence of a calculated
effort to subvert the regime’s “official line.” Activists have, for example, openly
challenged Putin’s claims that the war in Chechnya is winding down and that it
forms an integral part of a broader “war on terror.” Two banners echoing these
themes are frequently encountered: “They Deceive Us – the War in Chechnya
Continues” and “The Murder of One Person is a Crime. The Murder of Ten People
is a Terrible Crime. The Murder of Ten Thousand [is an] Antiterrorist Operation.”
Most graphically, these groups often hoist a placard entitled “New Victims of the
Counterterrorist Operation” that provides a running total of Chechens killed to date
as well as large photographs of victims, complete with biographical details.
Photographs of homes ransacked during zachistki are also prominently displayed.
Perhaps most cleverly, antiwar protesters have appropriated Putin’s
idiomatic phrase “We will hunt terrorists everywhere…If we find them in the toilet,
then we’ll wipe them out in the outhouse (sortir).”737 This promise, uttered in
September 1999 at the outset of the war, has come to encapsulate not just the
Chechen campaign but also the “get-tough” nature of the regime itself. As such,
variations on this phrase, now cast in ironic tones, are ubiquitous at these rallies.
“Russia, crawl out from the sortir!” has been present, for example, at every
demonstration since February 2000. Putin’s statement is also often paired with
737 This remark appeared as the “quote of the day” in 25 September 1999 editions of Komsomol'skaia pravda, Nezavisimaia gazeta, and Novaia Izvestiia, among others.
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pictures of child victims of Russian attacks in a calculated effort to underscore the
brutality of counterinsurgency operations. “Children [are] the victims of Budanovs
in Chechnya,” one sign reads, underscoring the fact that the war is still taking lives,
contrary to Putin’s confident assertions that the war is winding down.738 (Colonel
Yuri Budanov was charged and subsequently acquitted of killing an eighteen year
old Chechen woman on 26 March 2000).
Both the weekly vigils and the large-scale rallies have also sought to
highlight the bankruptcy of administration policies. In particular, demonstrators
have argued that such policies in fact increase the dangers facing Russian citizens.
For example, new placards were created after the October 2002 Moscow hostage
crisis to equate this terrorist act with the failure of Kremlin strategy. “The war in
Chechnya is the motive for terrorist acts in Moscow,” proclaimed one such banner.
And the war is clearly Putin’s, in the minds of these protestors, as is the fate for
continuing it: “If Putin will not stop the tyranny in Chechnya,” a placard reads,
“then someone must stop Putin.”
The regime’s overarching national idea and its apparent implementation in
Chechnya has also been subject to severe criticism. Slogans such as “FSB +
militarization of the entire country = the new national idea?” are staples of the
Committee for Anti-War Action’s weekly vigils, for example. Similarly, the
perceived militarization of the regime’s rhetoric and policies is often seized upon by
these groups as they seek to draw society’s attention to the social costs of the war.
“Chechnya,” one sign exclaims, “is a school of murder that a million citizens in
epaulets have passed through.” These groups have also cited the regime’s prior
claims to be constructing a multiethnic, law-based state to exploit contradictions
738 Boris Yeltsin actually issued the first statement of victory in Chechnya on 3 December 1999. See “Yeltsin ob”yavil o pobede v Chechne [Yeltsin Declares Victory in Chechnya]” Kommersant”, 12 December 1999. For the text of his statement, see “Polnyi tekst zayavleniya Borisa El”tsina,” Kommersant”, 12 December 1999.
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with this rhetoric. “There cannot be free peoples, [if we] trample on the freedom of
different peoples” and “Russia, a confederation of free peoples” are two oft-
encountered banners that derive their impact from the regime’s own claims. More
plaintively, posters demanding “Citizen Putin, remember our constitution!” draw
their rhetorical impact from the regime’s own frequent claims to be creating a state
governed by the rule of law.
Protestors have also looked beyond Russia’s borders for support of their
cause. In particular, these groups have tried to use the weight of the international
community and its norms to amplify their charges against the regime. “The single-
minded destruction of the Chechen people,” one banner exclaims, “is not a means in
the war on terrorism but a path to the dock of an international tribunal.” In general,
however, such efforts to increase leverage by referencing external actors and norms
are rare: “Europe, Wake Up!” is perhaps more revealing of the limited extent to
which these groups can call upon external actors to shame the Putin
administration.739
To magnify the contradictions in regime rhetoric, and to circumvent the
paltry coverage of their activities, these groups have forged a separate, if diffuse,
media network. Pamphlets and small broadsheets such as Chechnya: A Weekly
Chronicle are distributed at both vigils and rallies to pedestrians, for example. The
material for these publication is gleaned from several sources, including
independent radio and newspapers, but depends heavily on local activists in
Chechnya and neighboring Ingushetia for the bulk of its information. In particular,
these broadsheets rely on two independent websites, kavakazcenter.org and
chechenpress.com, for details of zachistki operations and current developments in
the war. Remarkably, the broadsheet Chechnya that is compiled by the Antiwar
739 Keck and Sikkink 1998: 23-29. Only the ARA, the Russian branch of a wider movement based in Italy, has explicit transnational links.
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Club is so thorough that it lists daily human rights abuses in Chechnya; some two to
three hundred copies are distributed at a typical weekly vigil in Moscow.740 The use
of the “street table” (ulichnoe stol’) is another means for distributing information
about a particular issue; the ARA often makes use of this form of protest. Press
conferences are also called – though rarely attended – so that this information can be
passed to editors and journalists. The Moscow Independent Public Library, run by
Dmitri Brodskii, a longtime activist affiliated with KAD, acts as a central repository
for materials related to human rights violations in Chechnya and in Russia itself.741
Other tactics are designed to call attention to the very censorship that makes
organizing protests more difficult. Various movements, notably ARA and For
Human Rights, have engaged in letter-writing campaigns aimed at State Duma
officials and even the President that call for the start of peace negotiations. One
campaign, for example, consisted of an open letter to President Putin asking nine
sensitive questions, ranging from the cost of the war to why Russia is playing a role
in Middle East peace talks with Hamas and the PLO but will not enter negotiations
with “terrorists” in Chechnya.742 Petitions have been circulated at rallies and street
tables that call for the start of negotiations and, in the case of the ARA, the use of
United Nations forces to police the settlement. Based on data provided by the ARA,
these petitions appear to meet with favorable responses among passersby; an
average of 40 signatures is collected for each hour of the protest, with a total of
some 6,000 signatures being gathered between April 2003 and May 2004.743 740 This broadsheet is now available online at: http://voinenet.ru/articles/16/index.shtml 741 Interview No.29, Antiwar Activist, 7 December 2002. The Library also maintains a website at: http://www.feedbackgroup.narod.ru/mipl/doc/main.htm 742 “Devyat’ voprosov Prezidentu Rossii Vladimiru Putinu [Nine Questions to President Vladimir Putin],” Novaia gazeta 28 August 2003. Thirty-two leading activists, artists, and political figures signed the letter. 743 Data compiled from the ARA’s Radikaly v Rossii (2002-2003): Khronika initsiativ [Radicals in Russia, 2002-2003: Chronicle of Initiatives], 17 January 2004. Archived with author. A copy of the petition is found at: http://www.radikaly.ru/forms/chechnya/form.php?lang=ru
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The Internet has also played a key role, perhaps the primary role, in allowing
these groups to distribute alternative sources of information. A key website portal,
Human Rights Online, functions as a clearing house through which affiliated groups
throughout Russia can publicize their activities, coordinate actions within and across
cities, and debate methods of challenging the government. The website, which
averages about 2500 daily hits,744 also acts as an electronic library, containing links
not only to government decrees and legislation but also to materials relating to
human rights. One such publication, the Conscript’s Compass, has come to be
recognized by both activists and the government as the most authoritative treatment
conscripts’ rights and of the legitimate loopholes for earning a deferment of military
service.745 Each of the major groups has also created its own website as a way of
publicizing activities and challenging the government’s version of events in
Chechnya. These websites do not, as of yet, carry the same weight as television or
even newspapers given low rates of Internet penetration in Russia (with Moscow as
a partial exception). Nonetheless, the use of the electronic list-serves enables these
groups to debate and to coordinate their actions across distances in a way that
transcends reliance on face-to-face networks alone.
As these myriad actions demonstrate, however, the antiwar movement is
rather fractious. Indeed, despite efforts to create umbrella organizations such as
Common Action and the Russian All-National Committee (November 2002),746 the
antiwar movement remains divided along two axes that blunt its impact. First,
activists differ sharply on how the issue of Chechnya should be resolved. On one
extreme, “radicals” advocate turning the issue over to the United Nations, entering
744 Personal correspondence, Activist, 6 May 2003. 745 Available at: http://www.hro.org/army 746 See “Rezoliutsiya o neobkhodimosti konsolidatsii antivoennovo dvzheniy [Resolution on the Need to Consolidate the Antiwar Movement],” 9-10 November 2002, Gazeta Regional’nikh Pravozashchitnykh Organizatsii (February-March 2003), 8-9. Also available at: http://www.hro.org/war/conf2002/kons.htm
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negotiations immediately, and argue that a sovereign Chechnya is the only practical
end-state. More “moderate” groups, however, seek to curb the worst excesses of
Russian forces but wish to keep at least the northern portion of Chechnya inside
Russia. This fundamental difference tends to create “pickets within pickets” and, at
least at the outset of the second anti-war campaign, stifled cooperation among these
groups.747
Second, these organizations remain divided over questions of tactics. Some
groups, notably Anna Karetnikova’s Antiwar Club, advocate the adoption of
“modern political technologies” such as rock concerts and festivals to reach a
younger audience. Other, more established groups favor traditional activities like
vigils or open letters since they are less confrontational in nature. Questions of how
much, and how often, to tweak the nose of the state are therefore central given the
precarious position these antiwar movements occupy. As a result, seemingly minor
questions – should the flag of Ichkeria, the symbol of an independent Chechnya, be
displayed at protests? – can set off bitter debates within and across these
movements.748 These debates also spill over into broader questions of whether these
antiwar groups can work with the state or must preserve their autonomy at all costs.
Such questions broke into the open during the Civic Forum (2001), when some
activists boycotted the Forum out of fear that the antiwar movement would be co-
opted and then shackled.
As if these fissures and state-created obstacles were not enough, these
movements also face hurdles in simply holding their protests. Police tactics at small
747 Sometimes these debates spill into the open. See for example ARA leader Nikolai Khramov’s open letter to Sergei Kovalyov, a key organizer of Common Action. “Why Two Anti-War Rallies Are Held in Moscow These Days,” 22 February 2001, available at: http://www.radicalparty.org/russia/letter_kovalyov 748 One new tactic is the “flash mob,” where activists coordinate through cellular phones and instant messaging to arrive at a location simultaneously. Such protests are difficult to anticipate and can delay a police response considerably. One “flash mob” took place in Vladimir on 10 March 2004 as a protest against the upcoming Presidential election.
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protests and especially larger demonstrations are clearly designed to intimidate
activists and would-be supporters. There is an informal but elaborately ritualized set
of negotiations between activist leaders and ranking officers before each
demonstration over the terms of the protest, including its length and subject matter.
And the police presence at larger rallies is substantial, often matching or exceeding
the number of protestors.
Threats of physical violence from onlookers, while relatively infrequent, are
enough to dissuade participation, too. The Committee for Anti-War Actions has, for
example, distributed a set of guidelines for how to deal with problematic, often
inebriated, people. That the Committee feels it necessary to have stock answers to
questions such as “why not exterminate all the Chechens and be done with it?” is
suggestive of the atmosphere at the street level.749 This is especially true of St.
Petersburg, where neo-Nazi groups often seek to disrupt antiwar rallies. In one
alarming incident (21 March 2004), skinheads waylaid and physically assaulted
several participants of an antiwar rally.750
Predictably, these groups are also chronically short of funds, and though
most receive some type of Western funding, they lack the resources to pursue a
more ambitious agenda.751 Finally, there appears to be a pervasive stigma attached
to participation in demonstrations. This may stem from a postcommunist aversion to
organized action, as Marc Howard argues, though this has not stopped participation
in strikes, Communist rallies, or Walking Together events.752 The media helps
reinforce this sentiment by openly questioning the motives of these organizations. It
749 “Kazhdyi reshaet dlya sebya [Each decides for himself],” KAD pamphlet, January 2000. Archived with author. 750 An account of this attack by one of its victims is found in “Vesennee Obostrenie – Ataka Fanatov [Spring Aggravation – Attack of the Fanatics], Novoi svet, 21 March 2004. 751 For Human Rights received $40,000 US from the National Endowment of Democracy in 2002, for example. Most of the small groups studied here do not receive anything near this total. 752 Howard 2003.
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is a common conceit among journalists, for example, that participants are paid to
attend rallies, thereby attaching an artificial quality to the demonstrations and
making them more easy to dismiss as “politics-as-usual.”753 To be sure, there is
evidence that some organizations, notably neo-Nazi groups, pay their members to
attend rallies or to disrupt those of other groups.754 Similarly, Walking Together
distributes free merchandise, especially cellular phones, for cell leaders who meet
quotas for attendance.755 It is highly unlikely that antiwar groups have resorted to
such tactics, however, in part because of financial constraints but more generally
because of the high level of personal commitment among members.
Given these facts, we might expect that small and divided antiwar groups
would have only a limited ability to generate the kind of pressure necessary to
entrap the Putin regime. Yet there is substantial evidence that suggests precisely the
opposite conclusion: namely, that the Putin administration is acutely sensitive to
negative press and, in particular, to the counter-claims being made by the antiwar
movement.756 While there is perhaps little danger of a groundswell of popular
outcry against the regime in the near future, this movement poses a threat to the
regime precisely because it remains outside the Kremlin’s control. Indeed, the
danger of these groups inheres in their ability to threaten a tipping of public opinion
away from passive tolerance of the war to open opposition. Crucially, it is the very
contradictions in the regime’s own rhetoric, and between its rhetoric and policies,
753 A Kommersant”-Den’gi report concluded, for example, that participants at the large 21 December 2003 antiwar rally were each promised 150 rubles (about $5 dollars) by Soglasie Foundation for attendance. The article largely casts political rallies in general as a “social racket.” See “Pravila igry. Sharash-shantazh,” Kommersant”-Den’gi 26 April 2004. 754 “Narodnaya partiya otmetilas’ v borbe za mir [People’s Party Registers Itself in Struggle for Peace]” Kommersant” 26 March 2003. 755 “Narodnye Gulyan’ya. Activisty poshli na vtoroi srok [People’s Stroll: Activists Begin Second Term]” Kommersant” 8 May 2004. 756 Tregubova 2003: 209, 265. She argues that the administration moved against Kommersant” simply because it publishes foreign editorials that are, in the words of Gromov, “utterly anti-Russian provocation and slander directed against [Putin]” (p.334).
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that has created this vulnerability that can be exploited by individuals and groups
willing to mobilize in the face of serious obstacles. The fact that the administration
feels it necessary to monitor even small vigils with a police presence is itself
suggestive of the regime’s sensitivities.
Moreover, it now appears that a second offensive has been launched against
these antiwar groups. On 23 February 2004, riot-gear clad militia disbursed a KAD-
sponsored protest at Lubianka Square, claiming that it was “unsanctioned.” In fact,
permission had been revoked during the night before – the Square was closed for
“snow removal” – but the KAD opted to hold the demonstration regardless. The
leaders of the protest, including the ARA’s Nikolai Khramov and For Human
Rights’ Lev Ponomarev, were detained for several hours (along with 11 others) and
subsequently fined in court (800r.-1500r. each). Shortly after these events, the
Prefecture’s Office of the Central Administrative District revoked KAD’s
permission to hold its weekly demonstrations at Pushkin Square. Indeed, on 11
March the police forcibly disbanded the vigil and arrested three participants.757
This marked the first time that the police had actively moved to prevent this
rally in its four-year history, with the sole exception of during the October 2002
hostage crisis. The demonstration remained prohibited as the case made its way
through Moscow’s civil courts, though KAD met surreptitiously at Pushkin Square
at the same appointed time with clothing adorned by KAD stickers. A lone banner
was briefly unfurled – “The authorities have forbidden our protest against the war in
Chechnya/We’re disputing this illegal decision in court” – before being quickly
757 The justification? One of the participants made a speech at the 23 February rally calling for a boycott of the upcoming Presidential elections. Under Russian law, this speech changed the meeting from an anti-war rally to a political campaign meeting, which is forbidden under strict measures on political campaigning. See “V stolitse uprazdnyaiut svobodu sobrannie [Free Meetings Are Abolished in the Capital] Nezavisimaia gazeta 26 March 2004 and “Luzkhov narushaet Konstitutsiiu [Luzkhov Violates Constitution],” Russkii kur'er, 29 March 2004, 1.
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confiscated by the police. These quasi-rallies were held until 7 April when,
surprisingly, the Tverskii Raion Court decided in favor of KAD and reinstated its
rally permit. It is important to recognize here, too, that this may simply be a case of
local authorities pursuing their own interests rather than following the clear
directive of the Putin administration. Nonetheless, these actions, whether
coordinated or not, still have the same effect of creating a difficult climate for social
protest.
Putin also used the occasion of his second electoral victory to submit a flurry
of new laws that, once enacted, will severely narrow all remaining avenues for
public protest. For example, a new constitutional law on referendums was proposed
on 18 May and passed its required three Duma readings by 11 June, a record pace
for any piece of Duma legislation, let alone a constitutional amendment. The new
law now requires that all petitions must collect a total of two million signatures in
45 days, with supporters drawn from at least half of Russia’s 89 regions. This
tangled bureaucratic path is further compounded by the fact that “initiative groups”
will be restricted to submitting only 2.1 million signatures; if less than 5 per cent of
these signatures are declared invalid, then the application will be denied.758 And the
Kremlin is serious about suppressing any public discussion of the issue: a joint
protest between the Communist and liberal Yabloko parties on 2 June at the Duma
was forcibly disbursed and several participants detained.759 True to form, this law
appears designed to reduce “shocks” from below, thus rendering the regime-society
relationship more stable and predictable.
Most alarmingly, a new “Law on Gatherings, Rallies, Demonstrations,
Pickets and Rallies” has also cleared its third and final Duma reading (4 June).
758 “Putin Seeks Control of Referendums,” The Moscow Times (25 May 2004); “Referendum v Tumane,” Novye Izvestiia (25 May 2004); “Voleiz’yavlenie. Aleksandr Veshnyakov zakatil demokratiiu,” Kommersant” 25 May 2004. 759 “U Dumy Provdeny Demokraticheskie Ucheniya,” Nezavisimaia gazeta 3 June 2004.
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Despite nearly 150 amendments to the first draft,760 the bill nonetheless remains
quite draconian in scope and intent. The law prohibits demonstrations of any sort in
four locations, including jails, courts, and Presidential administration buildings;
raises the minimum age for participation to 18; imposes a 10-day prior notification
rule; forces demonstrators to be responsible for maintaining “social order;” and
allows local authorities to cancel demonstrations one day beforehand as well as one
minute after a demonstration has officially begun.761 There is little question that this
law, in conjunction with the Law on Referendums, will shrink once again the space
available for challenging Putin’s vision for Russia.
Yet, as expected by the proposed argument, this renewed offensive led to a
surge in antiwar activities and support. Indeed, attendance at weekly vigils in
Moscow and St. Petersburg has nearly doubled since the arrests of February-March
2004, although this increase may prove only temporary. These groups are also
starting to innovate: a coalition of organizations in Ryzan’ have, for example,
launched a new campaign designed to call attention to the human and material costs
of the Chechen war. Unlike earlier initiatives, this new “Skol’ko?” (How Much?)
campaign consists of large photographs of daily life in Grozny and Moscow, with
children or people represented by a black silhouette meant to signify loss. Leaflets,
pamphlets, and a letter-writing campaign to Defense Minister Ivanov are also part of
the campaign; the hope is to spread facts about the cost of the war in terms that
ordinary Russians will understand.762 Finally, Soldiers’ Mothers is now actively 760 “Duma otdelila narod ot organov vlasti,” Nezavisimaia gazeta 1 April 2004; “Piket na obochine,” Novaia gazeta (5 April 2004); “Putin: Protestovat’ mozhno, no tikho,” Gazeta.ru 12 April 2004. On Putin’s own amendments, see “Dokument: Prezident Popravil “Edinyiu Rossiiu,”” Kommersant” 27 April 2004; “Prezident snial tabu na mitingi,” Izvestiia 28 April 2004. This pattern has repeated itself several times in Putin’s first term: (1) the Duma adopts an extreme position, perhaps at the behest of the Kremlin; (2) Putin overrules most of it, allowing Putin to appear “democratic” while (3) still nibbling away at constitutional freedoms. 761 See “I Protiv Prezidenta est’ Priem,” Nezavisimaia gazeta 28 March 2004. 762 See http://www.hro.org/war/2004/03/17-2.php
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exploring the creation of a political party – the “United People’s Party of Soldiers’
Mothers” – to compete through elections with the Putin administration and its
collective identity project.763
In sum, while the Putin administration’s project has accrued some gains, the
regime remains sensitive to a possible erosion of its support. As a consequence,
Putin has moved against dissenting centers of societal opposition – notably, antiwar
groups – despite their small size and often fractious nature. Putin even chose to use
the platform of his 2004 Address to the Nation to issue a warning to human rights
and antiwar groups: “Not all of [these groups] are oriented toward standing up for
people's real interests. For some of these organizations, the priority is to receive
financing from influential foreign foundations [while] others serve dubious group
and commercial interests.”764 Yet a possible crackdown on “internal enemies”
should not be interpreted as a sign of the regime’s strength. Instead, it is more
accurately viewed as a reflection of the thin nature of the regime’s societal support –
and how quickly its non-institutionalized returns can fade.
In particular, the regime is all too aware that societal support for the
Chechen War has slipped precariously: support for entering negotiations, once as
low as 15 per cent (December 1999), now stands at 65 per cent of those polled
(March 2004). Support for negotiations has in fact outweighed support for continued
military operations since as October 2000, suggesting that the administration
continues to prosecute the war even as support has fallen away dramatically.765
763 “Soldatskie materi obrazovali politpartiiu,” Nezavisimoe Voennoe Obozrenie 21 May 2004. As of June 2004, there is also discussion of the creation of a “Party For Human Rights” that is comprised of leaders from various human rights organizations, including Lev Ponomarev and Nikolai Khramov. 764 “Poslanie Federal’nomu Sobraniiu Rossiiskoi Federatsii,” 26 May 2004, 11. 765 Poll data available at http://www.russiavotes.org (“National and International Security – Chechnya”).
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Though the war has yet to emerge as a major electoral issue, 766 the Kremlin cannot
take such passivity for granted, and so remains concerned that antiwar groups may
be able to convert this latent discontent into active opposition.
Power, in other words, serves pomp in Putin’s Russia.767 This is not to
suggest that an authoritarian state is inevitable in Russia, or even that Putin aspires
toward that direction. Instead, this analysis suggests that the regime is actively
cultivating and protecting an image of power in the absence of its substance. In turn,
it is reasonable to suggest that the regime is and will remain sensitive to bad
publicity and challenges from below, however weak, because its power is not yet
institutionalized and its project not yet consolidated.
And, rather than exaggerate its control over events, it is likely that the
Kremlin is reacting to crises as much as it is driving them, and so may be stumbling
in a bid to maintain its equilibrium. This is especially the case if local authorities,
such as metropolitan courts, are also pursuing their own interests when dealing with
social protests. It is also likely that this fumbling will, if anything, increase as Putin
moves to silence or choke off alternative centers of opinion and as the regime
gradually loses touch with public opinion. Sensitive but not accountable to public
opinion, the regime may be working to consolidate its rule at an equilibrium point
that is inherently unstable. Indeed, the Chechen war has now become a lodestone for
the regime: having painted itself into a corner, and unable to back down, the regime
must push forward even if such actions continue to fuel counter-mobilization.
These antiwar organizations also illustrate that small groups can surmount
information blockades to pressure a regime using its own rhetoric even if these
efforts are not especially coordinated. Attempts are now being made to drown out
766 Colton and McFaul 2003: 156. A widening of the war to Ingushetia, for example, or another major terrorist attack in Moscow itself might generate active opposition. 767 Geertz 1980: 13.
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the voices of these organizations: the Kremlin has directed some 430 million rubles
in 2003 alone for the creation of films and other electronic media to “revive the
patriotic spirit” of Russian citizens.768 Similarly, a new state-owned “military-
patriotic” television channel (“Star”) is now slated to begin broadcasting 23
February 2005.769 In essence, the regime may be shedding its liberal and democratic
rhetoric in a bid to reduce its vulnerabilities to counter-claims by human rights
groups. It is unclear, however, if this is a viable strategy, for by increasing its
reliance on patriotic and statist rhetoric, the regime may be painting itself into
another, far darker, corner. Indeed, though this might lessen the risk of becoming
caught in the contradictions between liberal and statist-patriotic language, it may
enable other key constituencies to apply greater pressure on the regime to honor its
promises. The military in particular remains a key actor that can press the regime to
maintain commitments in keeping with the more strident features of its identity
project.
Indeed, these small groups may be acting as a brake on a further slide toward
statist or nationalist identity markers that have been strengthened by the Chechen
war. By silencing these groups while allowing nationalist groups and constituencies
to mobilize relatively unchecked, the regime may be shifting its center of gravity –
and its vulnerabilities – away from liberal markers but towards adherence to the
statist portions of its project.770 Put differently, Putin, sensitive to public opinion if
not accountable to it, may now begin to fall victim to his own efforts at adhering to
these markers and the more assertive policies that flow from them. As such, policy
768 “Istochnik: V 2003 godu na patriotizm v CMI bylo vydeleno 430 mln. pub. [Source: 430 Million Rubles Were Spent for Patriotism in 2003],” Gazeta.ru (21 May 2004). 769 “Politkomissary iz MinOborony Idut v Tsentral’nye SMI [Political Commissar from the Ministry of Defense Goes to Central Media],” Nezavisimoe voennoe obozrenie (5 March 2004); “TV Stanet Bolee Voennym I Menee Sportivnym [TV Becomes More Militaristic and Less Sporty],” Nezavisimaia gazeta (26 March 2004); “MinOborony: Vozvrashchenie v “1984” [Ministry of Defense: Return to ‘1984’],” Nezavisimaia gazeta (2 April 2004). 770 On rise of nationalist groups, see Verkhovskii 2002 and Umland 2003.
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reversals, particularly in Chechnya, may be ruled out as too politically dangerous for
the regime. This is especially likely if Putin’s policies are leading unintentionally to
the pollution of information about the state of societal opinion, as seems probable
given his intention to neutralize dissent in society.771 Putin himself was reportedly
shocked at the conditions in Grozny during a brief overflight in May 2004.772 Stage-
managed annual “direct line” press conferences with a carefully chosen “public,” as
well as relatively infrequent press conferences, may also create junk information.
Like Napoleon III, he may now start to lean forward precariously on his
chair, straining to capture the faint echoes of his project in a largely quiescent
public, a position that is vulnerable to a “bump” that threatens to topple him. In
other words, he is vulnerable to a sudden downshift in his popularity as a result of
an imbalance between rhetoric and actions that forces him to “run” harder just to
maintain the illusion of stability he has worked so hard to create. Sudden shocks
from Chechnya or its immediate consequences in Moscow may culminate in the
puncturing of the regime’s official message concerning Chechnya. Such “shocks”
may also arise from the international arena, especially if the demand to maintain
consistency with statist Great Power identity markers leads to a more assertive
foreign policy. We explore this possibility in the next section.
771 Alexei Vendiktov, the Editor-in-Chief of the independent Ekho Moskva radio station, indeed argues that the only reason his critical station has stayed on the air is because the Kremlin relies on it as one of the last “genuine” expressions of political opposition. See “Ekho svobody slova [The Echo of Free Speech],” Nezavisimaia gazeta (17 October 2003). 772 Telekhranitel’ radio program, Ekho Moskva, 16 May 2004. It is unclear whether this was genuine amazement on Putin’s part – thus suggesting that information is becoming polluted – or a carefully stage managed sentiment reminiscent of the old tradition of assigning blame to a leader’s advisors (“if the Tsar only knew…”).
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III DRAWING RED LINES: PUTIN’S STRATEGY, 2000-2004
Scholars have advanced a number of competing interpretations of Putin’s
grand strategy. Indeed, while a general consensus does exist that this strategy is
much more activist and coherent than that of Yeltsin’s, there is little agreement on
either the means or the ends of the strategy. Some scholars see Russian policy as
driven by the demands of rapid modernization, with integration being favored as a
tool for restoring Russia’s economy.773 Others, however, point to these same
integration efforts in the Near Abroad as evidence of Russia’s age-old imperialistic
tendencies.774 Still others maintain that assertive American policies have forced
Putin to hedge and “bandwagon” with the United States.775 This hedging strategy
suggests that, far from renouncing Yeltsin’s fixation with “multipolarity,” Putin has
embraced a similar approach but is more circumspect about pursuing it.
Though the demands of economic modernization and security should not be
discounted, I argue that Putin’s strategy is a reflection of his regime’s identity
project. More specifically, his strategy should reflect both the content of the project
and his pressing need to consolidate the still shaky nature of his regime. To be sure,
the modest gains of his project, coupled with the apparent weakness of political
opposition, means that Putin has less need for risky ventures abroad to shore up his
legitimacy than Yeltsin. Yet his position is far from secure, since efforts to
concentrate his power has also led to the “spotlighting” of his regime’s successes –
and failures.
Given the nature of Putin’s project and the measure of societal opposition,
what type of behavior should we expect to observe? At least five behavioral
predictions can be derived from the content and contradictions of the regime’s 773 See, for example, Wallander 2003: 307-312. 774 See especially Bugajski 2004. 775 Wohlforth 2004: 222-24, 234. He nonetheless characterizes Russian policy as “soft balancing” in Wohlforth 2003.
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project. First, we should witness strenuous efforts to maintain the appearance of an
active diplomacy, even if real gains are small or Potemkin in nature. A foreign
policy that generates “prestige opportunities” is essential for a regime that is seeking
to persuade society of its effectiveness at a time when its capacity is less than ideal.
Second, we should witness a retrenchment of Russian diplomacy so that peripheral
interests (i.e. Yugoslavia) are abandoned in favor of areas where Russia’s hand is
strongest. This follows from the logic of the first prediction: these areas, notably
Central Asia, Belarus, Ukraine, and Georgia, provide opportunities to demonstrate
maximum resolve with a minimum of cost.
Third, we should not observe any sharp policy reversals (i.e. territorial
concessions to Japan).776 The persistence of statist rhetoric, grievances, and
Prisoners’ Dilemma and Deadlock language should create a “floor” of revisionist
behavior at a level similar to that of Yeltsin’s tenure. In other words, if identity
content is path dependent, so too is the foreign policy behavior. Fourth, we should
observe efforts to pursue limited integration with international society unless such
initiatives contradict or jeopardize Russian interests in the “core” regions. This
stance is consistent with both the high proportion of “integration” type references
and the continued presence of Harmony and Stag Hunt type markers in official
rhetoric. Finally, the maintenance of an outsized military force should also be
observed. Reform, if it takes place at all, will be halting and partial because the
military potential of Russia – including its nuclear arsenal – remains an important
prestige asset.777
776 On the dim prospects for a Russian-Japanese settlement over the Kuril Islands, see Latyshev 2004. 777 Golts 2004; “Genshtab rezko – v 2-2.5 raza uvelichivaet kolichestvo prizyvnikov,” Nezavisimaia gazeta, 22 July 2004. On the creation of a new bomber, see “Rossiiskie Aviakonstruktory Gotovyat Bombadirovshchik 5-vo Pokoleniya [Russian Aviation Companies are Preparing a Fifth-Generation Bomber],” Lenta.ru. 24 December 2004
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How, then, does Putin’s strategy compare to Yeltsin’s policies? As Figure
7.3 illustrates, there has been a consistent presence of revisionist acts in Putin’s
foreign policy (2000-2003). These acts, however, occur with much lower frequency
than that recorded during either the Kosovo crisis or even the period preceding
NATO expansion. In fact, it appears as though Putin’s strategy has descended back
to the levels recorded during the “trough” periods in Yeltsin’s strategy (1997-98).
These data are consistent with an understanding of Putin’s foreign policy as one
being marked by pragmatism rather than the instability of Yeltsin’s strategy. This is
to be expected given that Putin’s regime, though faced with its own difficulties, has
nonetheless managed to consolidate itself at a “higher” equilibrium point than the
Yeltsin administration.
Figure 7.3 Russia’s Revisionist Behavior, 2000-2003 (N=191)
Three points bear emphasizing here, however. First, despite the apparent
reduction in the number of revisionist events, these acts actually represent a slightly
higher percentage of the total share of acts (23.4 percent) than during Yeltsin (21
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percent). Second, it is important to emphasize that the average monthly score of
Putin’s strategy is slightly higher than that under Yeltsin (1.45 compared to 1.31)
but that it still remains quite low. Third, there has been a sharp reduction in the
proportion of Type II and III revisionist acts in Putin’s overall strategy compared
with Yeltsin-era Russia.778 Data records 191 revisionist acts across this period, with
only 9 (5 percent) being Type III; this compares with 20 percent under Yeltsin.
Though these trends appear promising, we nonetheless still observe a persistent
floor of about 20-25 acts per six month interval. And, as these data reflect, they
constitute a higher proportion of overall acts even as the frequency has descended
back to the “trough” levels seen in the Yeltsin era.
How does Putin’s Russia compare with other states? Figure 7.4 compares
Russia’s strategic profile with that of China and Iraq. Unsurprisingly, Putin’s Russia
pales when compared with Iraq. Nearly 56 percent of Iraq’s behavior is classified as
revisionist and its monthly average score is a –3.1 (January 2000 to February 2003),
a markedly more revisionist score than the prior 1992-2000 era (see Chapter 6).779 It
is China, however, that provides the interesting comparison. Almost 18 percent of
China’s total acts can be coded as revisionist in nature.780 This proportion is
substantially lower than the 23.4 percent recorded during Putin’s tenure. Moreover,
China’s average foreign policy score is a 1.43, again slightly higher – and thus more
pro-status quo – than Russia’s average under Putin.
778 Type I actions center around threats. Type II actions consist of mobilization, reduction of aid, or sanctions. Type III actions are the most severe and consist of the use of military force. See Appendix Two for a full list of all actions. 779 Total N=935. 780 Total N=925.
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Figure 7.4 Russia’s Strategic Profile in Comparative Perspective, January 2000 to June 2003
Russia's Strategy in Comparative Perspective, by Month (January 2000 to June 2003)
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Table 7.9 also makes clear that Russia exceeds China’s total for all three
types of revisionist behavior. The difference between the two states is particularly
apparent for Type III revisionist acts.
Here, too, we observe that the pattern established by Yeltsin remains largely
unchanged under Putin. Russia once again exceeds the total number of revisionist
acts committed by China but falls far short of Iraq’s strategic profile. There is no
question that Putin, however, has been much more selective in his foreign policy. In
particular, Type III revisionist acts are much less frequent than under Yeltsin,
though this may simply capture the fact that Putin inherited borders that Yeltsin
made stable through force.781
Table 7.9. Comparative Revisionist Acts, by Type, 2000-2003.*
Type of Revisionist Challenge
Russia Iraq China
Type I
104
190
100
Type II 68 63 57 Type III 19 266 5 Total 191 519 162
* Data for Iraq run until 28 February 2003.
These data suggest that policy under Putin has become more selective than
under Yeltsin, particularly in the employment of force. Yet certain “red lines” also
appear to exist. Indeed, while scholars are correct to note that Putin’s foreign policy
is one of retrenchment, the flip side of the argument is often lost. While Putin may
be scaling back commitments and expectations of behavior in certain areas, he is
781 These data do not include use of force in Chechnya or surrounding republics. Though not technically cross-border in nature, it is likely that these acts only boost perceptions of the revisionist nature of Russian strategy since it stands at odds with Western notions of human rights.
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likely to be more willing to incur costs and assume risks in regions (or issues)
defined as pivotal. In effect, he has ceded positions of weakness (say, in Europe) in
order to husband strength for the regions in which Russia already possesses
substantial leverage. Putin may have fewer “red lines” than Yeltsin, but we should
expect to witness a much more vigorous response if they are crossed by outside
actors.
There is also reason to believe that the data presented in Figure 7.3 and
Table 7.9 are only the “floor,” and not the “ceiling,” of potentially revisionist acts.
Though the source of these data, Reuters Business Briefing, has exceptionally good
coverage in European affairs (among others), a sizable “news hole” exists in
coverage of the Near Abroad and Central Asia. As such, reliance on these data alone
might lead us to neglect slow moving trends and underreported events in these
regions. In fact, I argue below that we may be witnessing the unfolding of a security
dilemma in Central Asia between the United States and Russia, with other regional
actors (notably China) also playing a key role.
On the surface, Putin’s own rhetoric suggests that a significant shift has
taken place in the way that his regime characterizes America’s role in Central Asia.
On 24 September 2001, Putin made a widely-touted television appearance outlining
a five-fold plan for the assistance of American efforts in Central Asia. These
measures included: active collaboration between special forces; opening Russia’s
airspace to American aircraft; support for the use of airfields in Central Asia;
participation in search-and-rescue operations; and sending arms and provisions to
anti-Taliban forces. This pledge of support was couched in the language of a shared
struggle between civilization and barbarism. As such, an active defense of
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international society was necessary, a war that, as Putin reminded his audience,
Russia was already waging in Chechnya.782
By July 2004, however, references to a common fate and a shared enemy
had largely been eclipsed by thinly veiled suggestions of emerging competition in
(and over) Central Asia. In a speech to the Foreign Ministry, Putin argued that
“there cannot be vacuum in international relations…the absence of an effective
Russian policy in the CIS [Commonwealth of Independent States], or even an
unnecessary pause in the pursuit of this policy, will inevitably result in a situation
where other, more energetic states fill this vacuum.”783 In a second speech to his
Security Council, Putin used even harsher language, suggesting that “we are
colliding with growing political and economic competition in the CIS.” Putin
cautioned his audience to remember that, while Russia “carried great weight” in the
region, it cannot take such predominance for granted any longer. As a result, Putin
railed against the absence of an effective and consistent policy in the past, and
exhorted his officials to consolidate (ukrepit') Russia’s position.784 “We’ve
approached a certain point in the development of the CIS,” he concluded. “In fact,
we are facing an alternative – either achieve a qualitative strengthening of the CIS
and create on its basis an effectively functioning and influential regional
organization, or else inevitably see the erosion of this geopolitical space.”785
782 Vladimir Putin, “Zayavlenie Presidenta Rossii [Announcement of the President of Russia],” 24 September 2001. 783 Vladimir Putin, “Vystuplenie na Plenarnom Zadedanii Soveshchaniya Poslov I Postoyannykh Predstabitelei Rossii,” 12 July 2004. 784 Vladimir Putin, “Vstuplenie na Zasedanii Soveta Bezopasnosti [Speech at the Security Council Meeting],” 19 July 2004. 785 19 July 2004 speech; see also “Interview with First Deputy Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Trubnikov,” Nezavisimaia gazeta 12 May 2004, pp.1,5. It is possible to track these changes with even greater precision if we created a second dataset consisting of all official statements about Central Asia and then compared with results with the “Games” measures used above.
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Do Russian strategic responses to the establishment of American bases in
Central Asia follow from Putin’s continued use of realpolitik-type language? I argue
that, yes, the broad contours of Russian strategy are consistent with the regime’s
emerging emphasis on bounded competition. Russian policymakers have in fact
crafted a strategy designed to limit America’s role in the region but that will not
openly (rhetorically or otherwise) confront the United States.
There are four aspects of current Russian strategy that suggest competition
has returned to the region after the brief hiatus after 11 September.
First, there has been a flurry of institution-building and adaptation launched
by Russia in the space after 11 September. The Collective Security Treaty
Organization (created in June 2002) saw the creation of a rapid reaction force, for
example, while the Shanghai Treaty Organization and the new Russia-Uzbekistan
Treaty on Strategic Cooperation (16 June 2004) created institutional ties between
the Russian defense establishment and Central Asian militaries. The formal purpose
of these bodies is to coordinate activities against regional disorder and terrorist
organizations such as the IMU (based in varying strength in Tajikistan, Uzbekistan,
and Kazakhstan). While these motives are clearly important, these institutional ties
also consolidate Russia’s position as the guarantor of internal order for the
autocratic but weak rulers of Central Asia. Russia has also endeavored to become
the region’s supplier of arms and hub for air defense networks, further consolidating
its influence. Under the auspices of the CSTO, Russia has also bolstered its power
projection capabilities by (re)basing forces at Kant in Kyrgyzstan. The base, a scant
thirty kilometers from the NATO base at Manas, is home to a small squadron of
aircraft but can be rapidly expanded.786
786 Vladimir Putin, “Vystuplenie na Rossiiskoi aviatsionnoi baze [Speech at a Russian Airbase],” 23 October 2003. “Rossiya vernulas’ v Tsentral’nuiu Aziu [Russia Returns to Central Asia],” Nezavisimaia gazeta 24 October 2003.
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These institutional arrangements should not, however, be viewed as the
nascent forming of a counterbalancing bloc nor the recreation of the Soviet Union.
Instead, it appears that Putin has, since early 2002, been engaged in a quiet strategy
of asset-stocking, that is, trading on the dependencies of former Soviet republics to
leverage the Kremlin’s position. It appears, too, that Putin has decided to play the
“terrorist card” by emphasizing how these leaders are unable to safeguard their
positions with their own resources. Indeed, fear of the IMU and Hizb-ut-Tahrir has
proven a powerful glue that binds these leaders to Russia despite evidence that these
groups (especially the IMU) were largely decimated during Operation Enduring
Freedom. A quiet bargain has been struck, however: in return for “hardening” their
states to American penetration, Russia agrees to overlook the poor human rights
records of these states (especially Uzbekistan).
The United States, by contrast, has elected to tie its aid to these states to
progress in their human rights records. On 13 July 2004, for example, American
officials slashed aid to Uzbekistan by $18 million in response to its unwillingness to
discontinue its practice of jailing political prisoners. That this action came after
terrorist attacks in Tashkent and Bukhara underscored for the Karimov regime that
Russia might be a more reliable, and perhaps more capable, regime bulwark than the
United States. Fears of loss of rule plague these leaders, especially since the United
States bankrolled the 2003 “Rose Revolution” in Georgia that saw the peaceful
overthrow of Eduard Shevardnadze. As a consequence, the use of democracy
promotion as a tool of American strategy clashes squarely with the Russian
emphasis on strengthening these autocratic leaders against their own societies.
This asset-stocking strategy does have, however, the added benefit (from the
Russian side) of raising the costs for ignoring Russian desires. Though neorealists
tend to discount institutions, such bodies can raises the costs imposed on an outside
power in several ways. Institutions can, for example, socialize regional elites into a
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shared understanding of how security should be defined that clashes with the
hegemon’s own vision. It is possible, indeed likely, that these institutions will create
and reinforce an understanding that views regime survival, rather than democratic
development, as the basis for common security. Historical parallels for this type of
development can be seen in both the ASEAN framework and Latin America.
Second, and related, Russia can use these institutions as well as more indirect means
to pressure regimes to deny access to American forces or to place fairly onerous
restrictions on their basing terms. There is clear evidence that Russia has been
exerting quite serious pressure on both Moldova and Georgia to deny access to the
United States, for example.787
Second, and perhaps equally as overlooked, has been the pace and scale of
Russian military exercises since 11 September. Though we should be careful in
divining a state’s intentions from its choice of military doctrine or capabilities, the
fact remains that Russia has held no less than eight military exercises of increasing
size and sophistication since August 2002.788 Given the steady drumbeat of
scholarly analyses decrying the abject weakness of the Russian military
establishment, it is perhaps surprising to learn that nearly all of these exercises each
dwarfed anything seen in the postcommunist era. Indeed, analysts were forced to
reach back to the height of the Cold War to find parallels for the size of these
maneuvers. It is tempting to ascribe these exercises as signals to the West of
Russia’s seriousness (and capabilities) in the global “war on terror.” Russia, 787 See Radio Interview with Konstantin Kosachev, 16 August 2004. Such arrangements can impose “drag” on American strategy. One small example of this is the price differential in rent charged by Kyrgyzstan for Russian ($3 million) and American ($40 million, plus a substantial aid package) basing rights. 788 These exercises were: a Russian-Kazakhstan joint operation in the Caspian Sea (August 2002), Coalition-2003 (August 2003), Vostok 2003 (August 2003), Security-2004 (January-February 2004), Mobility-2004 (June 2004), Common-Security (July 2004), and Border-2004 (August 2004). For strategy to affect war, must be reflected in the tactics adopted by the military (“strategic claims need not be tested at the strategic level”) Biddle et al, 2004: 7fn12.
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Kazakhstan, and Kyrgyzstan, conducted a joint exercise (“Frontier-2004”) that
featured a simulated combined arms attack on a mountainous terrorist redoubt.
These exercises, however, were accompanied by intensive electronic jamming
designed to foil Western eavesdropping, a curious move if the point of the exercise
was to advertise Russia’s contribution to the antiterrorist campaign.789
Most, however, had little to do with combating terrorism. “Common
Security-2004,” held 9-15 July 2004, simulated a Russian defense and liberation of
Minsk after its overrun by an “unnamed coalition.” The coalition was repulsed, but
only after the use of tactical nuclear weapons.790 Even joint operations with NATO
in the Atlantic Ocean (August 2004) featured intense rivalry among participating
fleets, and was viewed by the Russian military as a vehicle for demonstrating the
prowess of Russian naval capabilities. Mobility-2004 is perhaps the best example of
the dubious link between these exercises and antiterrorism. Held in June 2004, the
exercise involved the movement of some 5000 soldiers and their armor, along with
aviation, from bases in European Russia (Pskov, the Northern Fleet) to the Far
Eastern Military District. When asked if these maneuvers were designed to test
readiness against terrorist opponents, Minister of Defense Sergei Ivanov snapped,
“that would be same as fighting mosquitoes with a hammer.” He then allowed that
“we are preparing our forces for the struggle with terrorism and with a hypothetical
adversary (protivnik).”791 Though the Russian press has tendered several
suggestions for this hypothetical enemy (NATO, China), few regard terrorism as the
789 “Postsovetskie strany kuyut protivoves NATO [Post-Soviet Countries Forging a Counterweight to NATO],” Nezavisimoe voennoe obozrenie 25 June 2004; “Anti-terrorist Exercises Underway in Central Asia,” The Jamestown Foundation Eurasia Monitor, 5 August 2004. 790 “Voiska NATO Okkupirovali Minsk [NATO Forces Occupy Minsk],” Nezavisimoe voennoe obozrenie 16 July 2004. 791 “President Dobralsya do “Tochku-U,” Nezavisimaia gazeta 24 July 2004; “Putin pokazhut perestrel,” Nezavisimaia gazeta 6 June 2004; “Ucheniya ‘Mobil’nost’-204’ zavershenyi,” Ministry of Defense Press Release (30 June 2004).
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main or even secondary motive behind the operation. Interestingly, part of the
exercise was used for practicing asset denial-type strategies: in one case, an airborne
assault was practiced, the same skills that would be required if distant airbases
needed to be neutralized quickly.
The Kremlin appears to be using these exercises to signal messages to
several different audiences. First, Moscow is underscoring its ability to defend
Central Asian regimes against domestic threats by showcasing its rapid deployment
capabilities (including heavy-lift aviation, which would be crucial for reaching these
countries). Second, it is likely that these exercises, which receive fairly extensive
coverage in Russian newspapers and (especially) on television, are aimed inward.
Indeed, these exercises offer tangible proof not only of Putin making good on
pledges to restore effectiveness to the Russian state – a key rhetorical trope – but
also emphasize the patriotic aspects of his identity project. Here, then, power is
serving pomp. Finally, the exercises appear calibrated to demonstrate to the United
States that Russia is, in fact, a key player, and that the road to regional security runs
through Moscow.
Third, further evidence of a shifting view on American role in the region
(slightly further abroad) comes fairly early after 11 September. The American
decision to implement a Train-and-Equip program in Georgia forced Russia to
choose between (1) its desire to support the global war on terrorism or (2)
preserving its sphere of influence. Russia had complained about the weakness of the
Georgian state and, in particular, its inability to police the Pankisi Gorge, a border
region with Chechnya used by Chechen rebels for regrouping and, allegedly, by Al-
Qaeda, too. Despite these demands, Russia strongly objected to the American
presence, and in fact stepped up its campaign against Georgia. By November 2002,
relations had degenerated to a point where the two sides were nearly at war with one
another; indeed, an “unidentified” aircraft actually bombed a Georgian village.
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Fourth, while it is clear that the creation of a stable, if not democratic,
Afghanistan would have important regional consequences, it is not clear that Russia
and the United States share the same strategy for attaining this end. Already noted is
the difference between the two states over the importance of democracy-promotion
in the war-torn country. Similarly, it is unclear if Russia strongly supports President
Hamid Karzai’s regime. On the one hand, Moscow has made a great show of
supporting him, going so far as to invite him to the SCO meeting in June 2004. On
the other hand, Russia has shunted significant military aid and resources to “Field
Marshall” Muhammad Qasim Fahim, Karzai’s powerful Defense Minister and Vice
President who has the support of many of the northern warlords.792
Fahim has been charged by Karzai with the creation of an Afghan national
army, an ironic position given that Fahim is commander of one of the most powerful
Tajik militias. Reports suggest that Fahim significantly, but unsurprisingly, mangled
his mandate by stocking nearly 90 percent of the new “national” army’s officer
corps with fellow Tajiks, a move sure to cause tensions in a multi-ethnic state where
Tajiks are a small minority. Russia was also first into Kabul after the Northern
Alliance contradicted US wishes and entered Kabul in mid-November (with Fahim
at the head).793 Karzai’s surprise dismissal of Fahim from his electoral ticket for the
October presidential elections on 26 July 2004, and Fahim’s subsequent pledge of
support for Karzai’s most immediate rival, set the stage for the October 2004
elections. That Karzai replaced Fahim with Ahmed Zia Massoud (younger brother
of the famed Northern Alliance commander), now Ambassador to Russia, suggests
792 “Marshal Fakhim Prosit u Moskvy ognya,” Vremia Novostei (11 July 2003), p.5. “Ostanovit’ Krovoprolitie ne udaetsya,” NVO (18 October 2002), p.2. Putin himself flew to meet Fakim in Tajikistan. See Griffin2003: 300. There are no hard numbers of the size of Russian aid in the 1990s. One account suggests that Russia is providing 15 MiG aircraft, 8 helicopters, and armored vehicles worth $US 35-40 million to the new Afghan National Army, with the understanding that this is only the first such order. See “Russia Supplying Military Hardware to Northern Alliance,” Daily Times (12 August 2004). 793 Black 2003: 294.
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that Moscow is covering its bets in post-transition Afghanistan. This maneuvering,
along with faltering post-conflict stability operations, may lead to the further erosion
of American strategy in Afghanistan.
Finally, we need to note that this discussion of an emerging security
dilemma between the United States and Russia does not take into account the role
played by third parties. As competition grows more heated, it is likely that Central
Asian leaders will have increased leverage and thus be able to play the two powers
off one another. This may have a “multiplier effect” on the nature and intensity of
the rhetoric used by each leadership. Similarly, there is increased evidence that
Chinese and Russian leaders are eyeing one another’s actions in the region
suspiciously as well. Indeed, there is a fundamental disconnect between Russia’s
desire to transform the Shanghai Cooperation Council and other institutions into
security-first organizations and China’s desire to promote economic cooperation
(over security issues such as Muslim separatists in north-western China).794 Of
course, this multiplier effect may still apply even if each party does not intend to
antagonize the other. We may, in other words, witness the outbreak of a security
dilemma through a “fit of absent-mindedness” or, failing that, from the actions made
necessary by regimes seeking to fulfill public expectations raised by prior rhetorical
claims.
IV. CAN THE CENTER HOLD?
On 7 December 2004, Vladimir Putin, Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov, and
other political luminaries gathered on the outskirts of the small town of Belokamen.
The trip, though officially billed as a military exercise, was no ordinary
demonstration. Instead of a inspecting the readiness of a local division, Putin and his
794 “Pyatero protiv odnogo [Five Against One],” Nezavisimaia gazeta 28 September 2004.
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coterie was treated to a recreation of the battle for Moscow (1941). The reenactment
involved some 2500 soldiers, hundreds of period tanks, and an embattled village
(itself complete with hundreds of refugees). One observer, State Duma deputy Iosif
Kobzon, apparently concluded wistfully that “there was never another battle like
this in the annals of warfare…And there won’t ever be another.”795
It is tempting to discount the importance of this martial demonstration as a
vestige of age-old state militarism.796 Yet it follows as only the latest in a series of
actions since President Putin’s second electoral victory in May 2004 that confirm
the general trends apparent in the preceding analysis. This conclusion identifies key
issues and trends that, if the analysis above is correct, will dominant political
developments in Russia during Putin’s second term and beyond.
First, we are likely to witness the continued dominance of statist identity
markers in official rhetoric. On the other hand, Orthodox and Eurasian identities are
likely to remain marginal, with Soviet-type language being invoked for specific
purposes (i.e. Soviet military victories). The most notable, and potentially
worrisome, development is the sudden surge of nationalist indicators and the
corresponding drop in civic language over the January-May 2004 era. This may be a
one-time “blip,” with the hierarchy of identity salience returning to its usual rank
ordering after May 2004. If this trend continues, however, it suggests that the
regime is capable of instrumentally manipulating its ranked preferences without
suffering any costs. Or, put more accurately, the net effect of shifting to nationalist
language from civic rhetoric is beneficial to the regime’s standing. Protests in the
wake of Putin’s decision to cut social benefits (January 2004) may indicate that the
795 “Bitva pod Moskvoi dlilas’ 40 Minut [The Battle for Moscow Lasted 40 Minutes],” NVO 24 December 2004. 796 Golts and Putnam 2004: 121-58.
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regime will in fact pay a price for openly contradicting its prior claims of
constructing a “fair, equal, and democratic society.”
The stability of the identity hierarchy across both the Yeltsin and Putin eras
raises the question of individual leadership. How important, for example, is Putin in
“Putin’s Russia?” We have now observed a seven year period in which the identity
hierarchy has remained unchanged. This is a tremendous range of stability given the
instability that has characterized much of Russia’s economic and political transition
from communism. In addition, this stability suggests that we cannot simply reduce
identities to the cognitive maps or national role conceptions held by any one leader.
Instead, we need to focus our attention on the public repetition of key identity
markers that can persist across individual leaders.
Yet we also need to pay attention to society’s reception of these identity
types. Indeed, the “instability of stability” can manifest itself in efforts by a regime
to tighten control over society that only exacerbate societal discontent. There is a
real danger that Putin’s regime is becoming all-too-successful at choking off, or
otherwise corrupting, its sources of information about societal attitudes.
Hybrid regimes are vulnerable precisely because they close down sources of reliable
information about society – newspapers, polling organizations and the like – and
therefore lose centers for assessing their performance from their citizens’
perspective. Presidential Aide and Economic Advisor Andrei Illarionov singled out
this problem in an outspoken December 2004 interview. The media is crucial for
“transmitting signals,” he noted, and the “amputation of these institutions will have
catastrophic consequences for all of society…because problems will not be decided
but will intensify, concentrate, this way or that, sooner or later, in the center of the
political system”797
797 Transcript, Interview with Andrei Illarionov, Echo Moscow Radio, 30 December 2004. Available at: http://echo.msk.ru/interview/33755/index.phtml
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As we have seen, regimes that successfully restrict information tend to
become increasingly concerned with anticipating public opinion. Unable to assess
accurately the state of public opinion, even small-scale protest can raise concerns of
a “bank run” on regime legitimacy.798 The appearance of stability – an image
assiduously cultivated by the Putin regime – can mask am high degree of
uncertainty, even fear, on the part of the regime vis-à-vis its own society.
As a consequence, this dynamic of instability-within-stability is likely to
drive Russian foreign policy. The political struggle that erupted between the West
and Putin’s Russia over Ukraine, and Putin’s dogged support for the eventual loser,
Viktor Yanukovich, can be viewed as simply the latest in a series of mildly
confrontational acts that have marked Russian policy since Yeltsin. The pattern of a
high-profile (and thus high-gain) issue, along with persistence when faced with
opposition, is one that has repeated itself throughout Russia’s postcommunist era.
Given this pattern, we are likely to see increasingly assertive acts in the
Transcaucasus, Ukraine, or Central Asia if support for Putin and his regime
declines. We can also be assured that efforts to create a bulwark of Russian
influence in the region through institution-building will continue apace.
We are also likely to witness a continued reliance on so-called legacy
weapons – submarines, fifth-generation aircraft, and the Topol-M intercontinental
ballistic missile – in military planning.799 In effect, these weapons are clearly tied to
status and prestige concerns rather than to any concern with combating terrorism. 798 See, for example, the rise of the St. Petersburg-based “Walking without Putin” movement, the Petersburg-wing of the Yabloko Youth organization, and various groups protesting cuts in social benefits. “Prosnulis [Awakening],” Nezavisimaia gazeta, 28 January 2005. 799 Putin’s public announcement that Russia had successfully tested a new “hypersonic” missile (either a mobile Topol-M or new system entirely, the Bulova) capable of defeating an American missile defense is a prime example. The announcement, made on the eve of the November 2004 ASEAN meetings, was clearly directed at both an international and a domestic audience. “Diplomatiya ‘Yadernovo Nederzhaniya’ [Diplomacy of ‘Nuclear Incontinence’], Nezavisimaia gazeta 18 November 2004.
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Military reform, then, will continue to be stalled as prestige concerns outweigh any
imperative to rationalize and streamline the existing force structure. The absence of
international status, not the lack of sufficient funds, is the main obstacle blocking
Russian military transformation.
A dozen years after the first predictions of a “Weimar Russia” emerged, and
a scant six years since those predictions had largely been dismissed, we are now
faced again with the prospect of a Russia sliding toward revisionism. It is difficult to
escape the conclusion that external events had played a key role in this shift. In
particular, the three “spikes” in grievance levels and realpolitik language are
associated with NATO expansion, the air war in Kosovo, and the introduction of
American bases to Central Asia.
To be sure, the politics of identity construction and maintenance at home
also helped drive this shift toward revisionism. But it is difficult to sustain the
argument that the outside world can have little impact on Russia’s political
development.800 Each of these crises worked to harden the boundaries between
Russia and Europe, fostering a sense of in-group identity that is now increasingly
been defined against parts of the external world. Russia’s strategy, as well as
sensitivity to perceived challenge, now hinges on how the processes set in motion in
the early days of a newly democratic Russia unfold over time.
800 Trenin 2003/2004: 83 and Goldgeier and McFaul 2003: 352-54.
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Conclusion
Since when have terrorists and tyrants announced their intentions, politely putting us on notice before they strike?801
It has long been an unacknowledged premise in security studies that
revisionist states arise suddenly, almost “overnight,” to challenge the international
order. This fear of predation not only drives states to engage in zero-sum security-
maximizing but in so doing also turns the wheels of international anarchy. Yet this
dissertation has argued for a different view. Revisionist states are not marked by
their share of an international system’s military or economic capabilities. Nor are
they characterized by malleable (and malign) hidden motives that await only an
opportunity to be pursued violently. Instead, revisionist states share a common
ideational trait: they all possess an exclusive identity project that involves a regime
drawing the political boundaries of the community on narrow and discriminatory
lines. Regimes with exclusive but coherent projects, such as the Soviet Union in the
1920s-early 1930s, are often subject to entrapment pressures that slowly build over
time. On the other hand, regimes with exclusive projects that are fragmented –
notably, Pakistan and Napoleon III’s France – are especially prone to ascending the
revisionist curve rapidly.
The key to understanding the origins of revisionism lies in adopting a
perspective that favors “films” over “snapshots.” It is the cumulative effects of a
slowly unfolding identity project, rather than proximate causes like sudden shifts in
the balance of power or new information, that creates the imperative for some
regimes to pursue revisionist paths. It is not enough, however, to propose a possible
connection between identity and action. We need to be able to measure variation in
the independent variable and to do so across time. The adoption of research designs
801 President George W. Bush, State of the Union, 28 January 2003.
412
that encapsulate broad historical swatches, as employed in Chapters Three and Four,
provide one method for capturing the temporal effects of identity. Similarly, the use
of computer-assisted content analysis (CATA) used in Chapters Six and Seven
enables a researcher to track the content and intensity of a regime’s project as well
as the relationship among the various strands of the identity bundle.
We also need to identify the causal mechanisms through which changes in
identity, or the moral purposes of the regime, are translated into grand strategy. I
argue that at least two such mechanisms are in play when moving from the regime’s
official rhetoric to the nature of its strategy. First, the “spotlight effect” describes the
process through which the regime’s rhetoric, and deviations from it, are highlighted
by the use of censorship and other repressive practices that silence potential
opposition. Second, the familiar dynamics of the security dilemma work to harden
identities by (1) clarifying the costs of failure for a regime and (2) fueling an ever-
escalating process of scapegoating. Each of these mechanisms works to enforce
conformity between word and deed.
These paths, while properly couched in probabilistic language, are
nonetheless robust and generalizable across cases and historical eras. Put differently,
there is a limited set of paths that lead to revisionism rather than a series of
idiosyncratic causes of a state’s revisionism.802 And it is clear that identity type has
a profound impact not just on the type of strategy adopted but also its effectiveness.
Each of the revisionist states examined here had grand strategies that were riddled
with deficiencies that were necessitated by the demands of identity maintenance but
that ultimately crippled the strategy itself. These pathologies extended all the way
from the lofty heights of grand strategy to the level of tactics on the battlefield. The
802 By contrast, Wendt argues that there are “multiple realizable pathways” at the domestic level that produce the pattern of international behavior. Wendt 1999: 254 and Chapter 4.
413
initial disastrous meeting of Soviet and German forces in June 1941, for example, or
Napoleon III’s ill-fated (and short-lived) offensive in 1870 are two important
examples of strategy and tactics slaved to regime, rather than state, survival.803
II. ASSESSING OUTCOMES
In an effort to test the three hypotheses outlined in Chapter Two, the
dissertation sampled from all possible “paths” to revisionism. As Table 8.1
demonstrates, the dissertation included two cases of revisionist states with exclusive
but fragmented identity projects – Napoleon III’s France and Pakistan – that each
experienced “regime death.” The Soviet Union provided a key example of a patient
revisionist state with an exclusive and mostly coherent identity project that was
nonetheless slowly fragmenting. And the case of a status quo post-Napoleonic
France (1815-48) provided more variation on the independent and dependent
variables since it possessed a coherent and reasonably inclusive – for the historical
era – identity project.
Finally, the case of postcommunist Russia enables us to examine the
evolution of an identity project in near “real time.” The movement from a mostly
inclusive to a more exclusive identity project within the space of the 1993-2004
time period also captures important within-case variation. If current trends continue
apace, however, it would be more accurate to shift postcommunist Russia from its
current cell in Table 8.1 to the exclusive and mostly coherent cell. In sum, this
research design samples from the complete “contrast space” of possible
outcomes.804
803 On the need to study battle-level outcomes, see Biddle and Long 2004: 525-46. 804 Collier and Mahoney 1996: 56-91.
414
Table 8.1 The Comparative Cases Revisited
Identity Type Degree of Coherence INCLUSIVE EXCLUSIVE
COHERENT
Conservative status
quo (France, 1815-47)
Risk-averse revisionist
(USSR, 1917-45)
FRAGMENTED
Reformist status quo (Russia, 1992-2004)
Gambling revisionist
(France, 1848-71) (Pakistan, 1947-71)
How did these hypotheses fare? In brief, these propositions were well-
supported by the empirical evidence, though we must be careful about drawing
conclusions from a small-n study.
On the identity side, evidence was clearly provided that the more exclusive a
particular identity project is, the higher the probability that a regime will become
entrapped (Proposition 1). Both Napoleon III’s France and post-independence
Pakistan provide clear evidence of regimes whose exclusionary projects yielded
diminishing returns over time, forcing the hand of each regime and creating a
pressing need to “do something.” The Soviet case also underscores the causal link
between exclusionary identities and foreign policy adventurism. As the Soviet
regime turned away from its internationalist pretensions and tolerance of diversity at
home, its room to maneuver on the home front narrowed. Its policies of ethnic
cleansing in the wake of the Ukrainian famine (1931-32) and its increased reliance
on Russo-centric themes were meant to consolidate its rule. Yet these efforts only
415
made the regime feel more, not less, insecure. Indeed, as the newly emerging social
history of the Soviet Union makes clear, the erstwhile totalitarian regime was
becoming increasingly alarmed that Soviet society was slipping ever further from its
grasp. Efforts to consolidate its regime, and to stem this tide, would manifest
themselves in a series of increasingly bold foreign policy ventures that had the
regime contemplating a preventative strike against Nazi Germany in 1941.
Substantial evidence also supports the contention that as contradictions
multiply in an identity project, the probability of entrapment increases (Proposition
2). Multiple contradictions will inevitably create opportunities that opposition can
exploit for mobilization purposes. Napoleon III’s contradictory, and often confused,
project combined divergent identities – Catholic, nationalist, and conservative, to
name a few – that created competing public expectations about the regime’s intent
that he raced to satisfy. Attempts to paper over these contradictions with the illusion
of active and decisive diplomacy – something that resembles Putin’s current style of
diplomacy – only created new opportunities for domestic opposition to illustrate the
regime’s apparent hypocrisy and to compel it to adopt new, ever more risky,
policies. In a more positive case, small antiwar groups were able to entrap Yeltsin
and his regime back into conformity with earlier democratic pretensions by
generating enough social pressure (audience costs) to force a change in policy
(1994-96).
We also find evidence that the greater the distance between the regime’s
legitimating principles and the normative content of international society, the
greater the probability that a regime will pursue revisionism (Proposition 3). The
Soviet Union and Napoleon III’s France were both considered outcasts from their
respective peer groups in international society. It is likely, however, that the causal
arrow runs both ways. It is plausible that a regime may scapegoat against the outside
416
world as a means of mobilizing its domestic population, a stance that may (or may
not) have a higher probability of sparking revisionism. On the other hand,
international society may label a particular regime as “rogue” independent of (or
prior to) its actual behavior. In this case, it may be that, following social deviance
theories, regimes “live up” to their label and deepen their own scapegoating
efforts.805 This in turn pushes the regime along the pathway to revisionism. We
cannot fully explore this hypothesis, however, until we have more precise measures
for the content of international society across time. The CATA framework adopted
here would be useful for such a task.
The case studies also provide important evidence for the microfoundations
of entrapment. Specifically, we find a positive relationship between the
effectiveness of media censorship and the rate of adoption of revisionist strategies.
The same also holds true of reliance on surveillance organs. All of the revisionist
states studied here managed to corrupt their own information through a combination
of overzealous monitoring of society and the progressive elimination of voices of
dissent. We also see this development in postcommunist Russia, beginning under
Yeltsin and then accelerating under Putin. To be sure, status quo states are not
immune from information problems, and misperceptions are likely to be found
among their leadership as well. Yet these regimes usually do not have the need to
create extensive surveillance organs or, if they do, they are less reliant on them.
Compare, for example, Putin’s reliance on such bodies with Yeltsin’s, or the
surveillance apparatus of the Bourbon Restoration with that of Napoleon III.
We also observed a clear relationship between levels of repression and the
rate of counter-mobilization. While repression can clearly silence an opposition, we
also observed that groups often retain the ability to circumvent even concerted state
805 Durkheim 1938: 65-73.
417
efforts to clamp down. Indeed, in certain cases the use of repression against
opposition movements can further their mobilization by calling attention to their
cause. The more anthropological methods adopted to study antiwar groups in
Moscow and St. Petersburg underscore the fact that groups can organize and
mobilize under less-than-democratic conditions. In fact, rather than view repression
as a one-time effect, it is more apt to view interaction between regime and society as
a process marked by innovation and adaptation on both sides. Entrapment is
therefore not confined to democratic systems. The surprising presence of opposition
in the Soviet Union during the height of totalitarian phase – the 1930s – presents
potent evidence of the fact that even non-democratic regimes are responsive to the
demands of their societies.
Finally, one of the most intriguing hypotheses is the contention that the
frequency and intensity of exclusive language increases through interaction and
does not fall to previous levels. This is true equally of a regime interacting with its
society and at the international level (especially during a security dilemma). The use
of CATA data allows to assess this hypothesis with much greater accuracy than
previously possible. We see clear evidence of this ratchet effect in postcommunist
Russia in at least two key periods: the post-NATO official enlargement and after
Kosovo in 1999. In each instance, grievance levels recorded a sharp spike before
settling back down to a new equilibrium point, one that was higher than the pre-
crisis era.
These results are especially encouraging for identity-based explanations of
state behavior. Nonetheless, these data should not be read as “knocking out”
neorealist or rationalist explanations, particularly if we treat such approaches as
being essentially probabilistic in nature (even if their own leading practitioners do
418
not).806 Identity does not explain all state behavior, and there is no doubt that
declining material conditions can play a role in compounding a regime’s
entrapment. Declining economic performance, for example, may undercut a
regime’s ability to buy off or otherwise silence potential opposition. On the other
hand, surging economic performance may grant the regime greater license and will
provide returns to the regime that are independent of the regime’s rhetoric.
Similarly, declining performance relative to a rival or enemy may only
increase a regime’s sensitivity to potential challenge and may cause the regime to
“jump through” its window of opportunity at a faster rate than prior rhetoric alone
would suggest. We might note, too, that increased relative performance may assuage
fears of vulnerability by lengthening time horizons.
Critics might also argue that identity is really just a reflection of existing
power balances, whether within society or in the broader international system. The
implication is that, if we move one step behind identity in the causal chain, we find
that material factors are actually at work. This would strip identity of its presumed
causal weight as an independent variable. Yet the data presented here directly
address this challenge: identity cannot be removed from the picture. Both the initial
large-N sample and the case studies illustrate that similar causal processes are
present across cases that vary widely in terms of material variables such as relative
power, economic performance, or system polarity. Far from adapting to their
material circumstances, we observe regimes that repeatedly pursued policies that
openly courted disaster, a pattern of behavior that is at odds with the realist baseline
of “normal” state behavior.
806 Brooks and Wohlforth 2002: 96.
419
Moreover, the case studies provide numerous compelling examples of
identity changes predating key structural shifts in the international system. More
specifically, these examples include:
(1) The use of post-Napoleonic French military to police Europe by 1822, only seven short years after the bloodiest war in Europe was unleashed by France (2) Napoleon III’s refusal to balance against Bismarck despite the danger posed by Prussia (3) The exclusionary turn in Soviet rhetoric and the corresponding aggressiveness of Soviet policy was tied to the situation in Ukraine (1931-32), not the rise of Nazi Germany (4) Soviet plans for a preemptive strike against Nazi Germany in summer 1941 were not tied to intelligence reports about German troop movements (5) Pakistan’s repeated gambling in the face of a much stronger Indian foe (1965, 1971) (6) Yeltsin’s “Pristina Dash” came after a rise in grievance levels and Deadlock scores that began as early as 1997, two years before the NATO air campaign
These examples, along with others detailed in the historical case studies,
pose a set of puzzles that either singularly or collectively are difficult for prevailing
approaches to explain. In each case, the type of identity project relied upon for
legitimization purposes worked to restrict the choice set of each regime. Strategies
as a result were slaved to the dictates of the identity project and its content, rather
than to the information or pressures emanating from the international environment.
In the final analysis, though these states were in some ways the ultimate
practitioners of realpolitik, the origins of such behavior were ideational, not
material, in nature.
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II. EXTENSIONS
A Random Walk Through Bargaining Models of War
The identity-based argument advanced in this dissertation also yields
theoretical insights and empirical predictions at odds with emerging rationalist war-
as-bargaining models. At their core, these models share the premise that warfare
provides information. This information in turn allows the warring parties to
converge on a mutually acceptable outcome based on the newly revealed balance of
power (or resolve). By contrast, I argue that such convergence does not necessarily
take place, especially if the new information only further clarifies the risks for the
regime if it does not succeed. Indeed, the provision of new information can lead not
to adjustments in policy ambitions but the exact opposite: the escalation of
ambitions and a “gambling” bid to recoup prior losses (and then some). Subsequent
disputes are therefore more, not less, likely to escalate to conflict since the memory
of a prior dispute or concession will only increase the demands for the regime to
score gains.
Similarly, the contention that subsequent conflicts will be shorter in duration
– a staple of rationalist theorizing – is also problematic.807 If a regime is moving up
the entrapment curve, then we are more likely to observe the opposite result. The
Soviet regime, for example, spent the pivotal 1939-41 period steadily increasing
both the amount of resources devoted to foreign expansion and the degree of risk it
was willing to accept in its pursuit. As a result, the duration of the conflicts that it
was involved in increased over time. We should also note that an emphasis on the
duration of war as the measure of a state’s learning curve is also questionable. A
two-week war might be coded as “short,” for example, and yet the war may have
807 Smith and Stam 2004: 783-813, especially 809.
421
been even shorter – or not undertaken at all – if the regime was not hamstrung by a
narrow choice set. Decision-making in successive Pakistani regimes during the
1964-71 era is especially relevant here. In short, the dissertation’s research suggests
that for at least some members of the population of states, notably those with
exclusivist identity projects, rational war-as-bargaining explanations may have less
purchase than believed.
The argument proposed here also raises questions for the emerging
“selectorate” theory of war initiation. According to this approach, domestic
institutions that govern leader selection and removal create a varying set of
incentives to initiate war. An overriding concern with creating sufficient private
(and public) goods for the selectorate is thought to drive a regime’s foreign
policy.808 While the theoretical move to the regime level is a welcome one, current
versions of the selectorate theory of war has difficulty explaining why rulers adopt
particular strategies and persist in them despite their suboptimal nature. Variation in
strategy stems not from a ruler’s desire to keep power, which, after all, is a constant,
but from the ideational sources that these authors explicitly exclude from their
analysis.809 Moreover, while the notion of “audience costs” plays an important role
in disciplining rulers, the selectorate theory is silent on why certain grievances, but
not others, are cause for action. Without measuring the content of the regime’s
rhetoric, we cannot determine if a particular issue or grievance is actually salient to
the regime and, crucially, the public.810
These are not insignificant points given that the two approaches generate
different behavioral predictions. While the selectorate theory concludes that victory
808 Bueno de Mesquita, Morrow, Siverson, and Smith 2004: 363-88. 809 Bueno de Mesquita, Morrow, Siverson, and Smith 2003: 74-75. 810 Put differently, it is the content of the regime’s message that generates the audience costs by (a) creating expectations that must be met and (b) by providing the “raw material” that enables counter-mobilization.
422
is necessary to score gains, for example, the identity-based approach offered here
suggests that even military defeat can be used in some cases to generate returns.
Saddam Hussein’s ability to spin golden thread from the dross of military defeat in
the first Persian Gulf War is one clear example. In addition, leaders are not simply
free to “pick the policies” dictated by the selectorate but in fact can have their
choice set narrowed significantly over time. And, finally, all regime types, including
those with small selectorates, will escalate their demands in wartime and prolong
the conflict if they are on the high end of an entrapment curve. This is true
independent of selectorate size, and so even authoritarian regimes with exclusive
identity projects are unlikely to be as free to scale back their demands as argued by
the selectorate theory.811
The arguments are not necessarily competing, however. It may be that
entrapped regimes are a smaller subset of the larger population of states that initiate
wars. Yet we must be cautious about advancing “nested” arguments in which
rationalist approaches provide the “trigger” for an event while the path dependency
of identity explains the motive for action. These triggers, for example, may be little
more than symptoms of the underlying identity processes at work, and therefore are
not truly causal. In addition, as noted above a rationalist and an identity-based
explanation will often generate competing expectations about state behavior.
Keeping these perspective distinct, at least in some instances, therefore seems a
better course if we are to separate out the causal processes that lead to revisionist
behavior.812
811 These specific predictions are found in Bueno de Mesquita, Morrow, Siverson, and Smith 2004: 365-67. 812 On the integration of rationalist and constructivist approaches, see Fearon and Wendt 2002.
423
There is nothing inherent in my argument, however, that precludes
formalization. For example, we can assess the value of a military victory to an
entrapped regime in the following simple manner.
v - k + LV - MV where: V represents the gains from victory K represents the costs of fighting LV represents the current state of legitimacy and MV represents the rate of counter-mobilization against the regime
The value of a defeat for an entrapped regime is represented with an
identical formula, with one adjustment. Here, defeat (X) is a positive sum but is less
than the gains that accrue from victory (V).
x - k + LD – MD
Finally, we can also estimate the regime’s utility function for gambling for
resurrection. In this equation, q denotes the probability of victory in warfare. Note
that a regime on the high end of an entrapment curve will gamble even if q = 0. Put
differently, even a military defeat that does not remove the regime itself is
considered preferable to accepting the legitimacy costs and counter-mobilization
rates associated with standing pat (LSP and MSP, respectively).
424
q(v-k) + [LV - mV]) + (1-q)(x-k + [LD - MD]) > LSP - MSP
Finally, revisionist states are interesting from a game theoretic standpoint
because they often do not conform to standard “screening” models of state
interaction.813 A “screening” strategy involves the incremental use of slowly
escalating actions designed to elicit a response from an opponent. The information
that is received from such a strategy is then used by the would-be revisionist to
assess the resolve of a potential target. Yet we have seen multiple examples where
regimes are either misreading the information revealed by these strategies or are
plunging ahead in spite of themselves. We might conclude that the domestic
imperatives of identity maintenance take precedence over the external security
environment, at least for regimes with exclusive and fragmented identity projects. Constructivist research
This dissertation also generates insights that can further the constructivist
research agenda. In particular, the empirical and replicable measure of multiple,
perhaps competing, identities allows for a much more nuanced understanding of
identity and its evolution. Current efforts to collapse identity into a single attribute
(“democratic”) or role type (“rogue”) will miss much of the important variation
occurring within an identity bundle. Indeed, we need to unpack these bundles if we
are to explore how identities of varying salience and content can shape the demands
on the regime as well as the subsequent nature of its policies.
Computer-assisted content analysis (CATA) is also a particularly promising
research tool. This methodology enables us to construct measures that are precise,
replicable, and falsifiable while analyzing vast amounts of textual data at a fraction 813 See for example Matschke 2003: 209-23.
425
of the cost associated with a large-N survey. In the future, if a critical mass of
scholars adopts this approach, a databank of different identity-related search
dictionaries can be constructed. Such a databank would enable researchers to share,
modify, and apply dictionaries across issue areas and subfields. The result will be
cumulative research in identity studies as scholars can build upon their efforts (and
those of others) instead of constantly crafting project-specific definitions each time
they use identity as a variable (see also Appendix One).
The dissertation also suggests that constructivists need to place as much
emphasis on the reception of identity – whether by external or domestic audiences –
as on its projection by an actor. Ideally, such an investigation would call on multiple
methodologies, including ethnographic studies of select texts or practices (often at
street-level). This attention on both the top-down and bottom-up construction and
contestation of identity raises additional questions. How do we empirically measure
unexpressed beliefs? That is, should we focus our efforts on capturing the most
frequent themes in a regime’s rhetoric or, conversely, should we hunt for the
unspoken understandings and taken-for-granted habits that lie below the surface?
Just how important are “silences” in rhetoric?
Answering these questions will require pushing past mere references to
society or culture. Instead, we need to marshal different methods to breach the
already porous divide between international relations and comparative politics. In
the final analysis, the relationship between a regime and society is equally as
important as that between a state and international society. Society, then, cannot be
bracketed, as it currently is in systemic constructivism, since it plays a constitutive
role in the shaping of collective identity.814
814 On the need to “bring society back” into constructivism, see Hopf 2002: 288-95. On the bracketing of society, see Wendt 1999: 11-13, 201. See also Sterling-Folker 2000: 97-119.
426
We could imagine, for example, extending the study of postcommunist
Russia offered here by adding additional methods. To measure societal acceptance
of the official project, we could draw together focus groups that watch the same
nightly news broadcasts or speeches used for the CATA analysis. These groups
would be asked to record what they believed to be the most salient identities and
issues expressed in the speech. This would allow us to measure the degree to which
the most frequent categories tracked by CATA are actually perceived as salient (or
not) by random samples of the Russian public. Similarly, a large-N public opinion
survey could be used to assess Russian attitudes toward various aspects of the
regime’s identity project. Thermometer measures and scaled responses (is X more
salient than Y? than Z?) would provide valuable insights into what types of
identities resonate among the population.
Indeed, the issue of identity reception introduces a host of promising
research avenues and questions. How much disillusion must exist among a
population about the regime’s inability to fulfill stated goals, for example, before
counter-mobilization occurs? Can regimes manipulate their rhetoric within a narrow
band to placate a population but not generate pressures to “do something?” And,
perhaps most interesting, what happens if the public openly accepts hypocrisy from
its leaders? It is possible, and perhaps even likely, that a society is willing to tolerate
a certain amount of contradiction in exchange for receiving validation on another,
more important, issue. Clearly, not all instances of rhetoric contradiction become
regime-threatening. Moreover, cross-national psychology studies have concluded
that some cultures, primarily Asian, are much more at home with contradictions and
inconsistencies than are others that favor binary distinctions (primarily Western).815
815 Nisbett 2003: 165-85 and Suh 2002: 1378-1391.
427
Equally as important is the issue of time lags and threshold effects.
Constructivists have yet to explore the issue of how long it takes for changes in
identity to manifest themselves in behavior. In the case studies presented here, we
have seen have the time between a perceived challenge and a response shortens as a
regime becomes increasingly entrapped. Yet we still have little information on the
comparative length of efforts to mobilize a citizenry or whether time lags vary
across issue areas. It may be easier, and less lengthy, to mobilize citizens with
increasingly exclusive rhetoric against vulnerable minorities than it is to rally
against a foreign, perhaps more powerful, enemy. We might also note that changing
media technologies may be collapsing the distance between changes in identity –
say, an increase in exclusive rhetoric – and a change in behavior. Media may
therefore be an important variable to account for when pursuing cross-time research.
It is important to note, too, that social psychology often misses the effects of time
lags because experiments are conducted in controlled settings that do not allow for
lengthy delays in priming identity.816
The issue of threshold effects is also of crucial importance for identity-based
research. Put crudely, we need to determine empirically “how much” identity is
needed to create a shift in the nature of a state’s strategy. For example, does every
“spike” in identity rhetoric lead to a change In observed behavior? And, crucially,
do different types of identity rhetoric (i.e. nationalism, civic, or Eurasian) have
different threshold points? It is plausible that different markers have a different scale
of resonance among the broader public. In effect, it might take less nationalism
relative to other types of markers to mobilize society.
816 This neglect underscores the fact that we should not rely solely on social psychology for our insights into the microfoundations of identity.
428
The content analysis framework adopted here can also be applied to help
answer questions surrounding the linkage between the intensity of rhetoric and
violence. Cross-national research could be conducted, for example, to discover
tipping points that might in turn serve as early warning measures for conflict. We
might observe a generalizable pattern of pre-violence mobilization (measured by
number of markers over a given length of time in a standardized unit of text), a
sharp and sudden campaign that radicalizes a population, and then a clear “signal”
to engage in violence against neighbors or neighboring states. A similar framework
would allow us to track the unfolding of a security dilemma between states before it
spills over into open confrontation or war (see Chapter seven). Such a research
trajectory might bring us closer to creating early-warning measures that an earlier
generation of political scientists once sought.817
Answering questions concerning time lags and threshold effects would
greatly bolster the constructivist research agenda. To date, constructivists have
advanced a curiously weak version of their own arguments about identity and
behavior. In deterministic fashion, identity is thought to translate into behavior
almost instantaneously while each observed “spike” has an impact on a state’s
policies. Such a stance allows critics to dismiss constructivist arguments by (1)
suggesting that identity is simply an intervening variable that reflects changes in the
material environment and (2) by finding instances of policy reversals without
corresponding changes in rhetoric (or vice versa).
If couched in probabilistic terms, however, an identity-based explanation of
state behavior would not only be more robust but also more realistic. We can
imagine, for example, that the probability of a regime with an exclusive identity
817 See Hogenraad 2003: 5-20. This has long been a hope of political scientists. The founders, such as Harold Lasswell and Karl Deutsch, both wrote seminal early articles hinting at this type of research. See Lasswell 1938 and Deutsch 1956.
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project pursuing revisionism increases based on: (1) the size of the gap between
rhetoric and reality at a given time; (2) the accumulated weight of past
contradictions; and (3) the salience of the particular identity within the given
hierarchy in the past and at present. These variables give us a handle on when we
should expect to observe changes in identity translating into aggressive foreign
policy.
III. THE FUTURE OF REVISIONISM
Despite the declining prevalence of territorial revisionism in world politics,
we have every reason to believe that revisionist states will continue to emerge.818 If
the trends I have identified in Russia are correct, we may witness increasing
competition between the United States and Russia in Central Asia, a competition
that may spill over into other issue areas. A rising China also fits the archetypal
revisionist state outlined in this dissertation: a regime astride an exclusive and
fragmented identity project that is faced with a rising level of counter-mobilization
by societal actors.819 Iran and North Korea have all been labeled as “rogue” states
by dint of their possession (or possible possession) of nuclear weapons and the
challenge they pose to the current nuclear order. Non-state terrorist networks could
also present a fundamental revisionist challenge to the international order if they are
capable of provoking an American (over)reaction that brings down the current
order. It is possible, however, that the very nature of this threat will provoke a
rallying effect by threatened states that will only reinforce the state-dominated logic
of the international system.820
818 Zacher 2001: 215-50. 819 Tanner 2004: 137-56. It is likely, however, that Chinese revisionism is currently narrowly focused on Taiwan. 820 Mendelsohn 2004: 45-68.
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The real challenge to the current international order comes not from these
actors, however, but from the system’s hegemon, the United States. Viewed from a
strictly neorealist position, this statement is absurd: how can the United States revise
international order when it is, in many ways, the international order? After all, the
United States not only represents the pole in a unipolar world but also created the
institutions and practices that underpin the system itself.821 Yet in the post 11-
September world we have witnessed an American foreign policy that is bent on
revising many of the foundational principles of the international order. Much of the
impetus for the revisionist turn can be ascribed to the nature of the identity project
that the Bush administration is pursuing. A binary world view, coupled with
proselytizing zeal and often confused rhetoric, has led to an exceedingly ambitious
gamble to accelerate democratization in the Middle East through violence.
Though the nature of American policy in the aftermath of 11 September has
generated a storm of publications, the basic outlines of this revisionist challenge are
clear. First, American policy has essentially created a new conception of partial or
circumscribed sovereignty that is justified on the grounds of regime characteristics
rather than a state’s foreign policies. The National Security Strategy (September
2002), for example, contends that “rogue-ness” is a quality that attached to a state
by virtue of its internal practices – its human rights record, its acquisition of
illegitimate weapon systems – rather than its external conduct.822 As a result,
offending states may have their sovereignty “clipped” if they violate this emerging
American conception of appropriate internal conduct.823 This in turn leads to a
shifting understanding of the rules and norms governing the application of military
821 Ikenberry 2001. 822 The United States National Security Strategy (September 2002): 14. 823 Krasner 2004: 85-120.
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force. Regime change (or transformation), once deemed illegitimate, is now
explicitly touted as a moral imperative for the world’s hegemon.824
American policies are also currently running counter to prevailing practices
of dispute resolution. The use of ad hoc “coalitions of the willing” represents a
sharp departure from earlier reliance on multilateral institutions as a means of
orchestrating collective action. Moreover, the refusal of the United States to join
many of the organizations – the International Court of Justice, the Kyoto Protocol –
that are themselves the logical outgrowth of earlier multilateral policies suggests a
weakening of the behavioral norm. Even taken-for-granted norms are being
challenged. The new Proliferation Security Initiative, for example, challenges
existing laws concerning the right of free passage for vessels navigating territorial
waters and the high seas. According to both custom and international law, such
vessels cannot be legally stopped for search-and-search operations. Now, however,
the United States is backing the PSI as a means of restricting such rights in order to
curb the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction through maritime routes.
Current American policies raise an interesting question: what happens when
the hegemon is no longer satisfied with its own order? Can hegemons effect a
transition from one order to another without provoking opposition, whether of the
counterbalancing variety or from its own citizens? As the data collected here
demonstrate, democracies have rarely embarked on sustained revisionist campaigns.
This is due in large measure to the fact that it is hard to sustain the in-grouping
pressures necessary to create and sustain a more exclusive identity project.
Democracy and, equally as important, its language, tends to be sticky. As a
consequence, potential opposition can mobilize more easily by using long-
824 This is particularly destabilizing if this new practice (or norm) diffuses broadly across states. Russia has cited the precedent of an American preemptive doctrine to declare a similar policy.
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established ideals and identities to entrap the leadership back into conformity with
prior tenets of democracy.825
Yet there is no question that the Bush administration has shifted American
identity in a more exclusive direction after 11 September, whether measured in
terms of tighter immigration, extraordinary renditions, a renewed emphasis on
patriotism, or exclusionary local policies directed at minorities (especially Muslim
populations).826 The muted outcry in the wake of the Abu Ghraib abuse cases, the
appointment of Alberto Gonzales as the Attorney General, and the absence of an
organized antiwar movement all suggest that, for now, the regime is not really
paying any substantial costs for pursuing such ambitions. Given that the United
States is unlikely to be checked in the near future by counterbalancing coalitions, it
is likely that the remaining impediment to a even more extensive attempts to reorder
the current international order remains the American people and their willingness to
support or endure these efforts.
If we are to tap the roots of revisionism – and, even more hopefully, if we
are to be alerted to such actions in advance – we must continue to explore the
relationship between identity and grand strategy. A good starting place would be to
recognize that the distinction between status quo and revisionist states is in fact an
ideational variable. We must broaden our focus beyond material capabilities and
Great Powers if we are to recognize that the path to revisionism – and to ruin – is set
by a regime’s efforts to legitimate itself. Such strategies often fail. Yet the
devastation and bloodshed unleashed by ill-fated revisionism can nonetheless shake
the very foundations of international order.
825 It is possible, however, that a new administration may be able to use the bully pulpit as a means of shifting what democracy means, thereby preventing or weakening this type of opposition. 826 Note, for example, the rise of anti-American rap music within Muslim communities.
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Appendix One: A Word on Words
Despite a long-standing interest in the use of content analysis, political
scientists have yet to embrace computer-assisted textual analysis (CATA) as a
method for identity measurement.827 There are, however, a number of substantial
advantages to using such a methodology. This appendix is designed to highlight the
advantages and drawbacks to using CATA while also providing details on how the
content analysis was conducted in Chapters Six and Seven. The appendix is divided
into five sections: (1) an overview of CATA; (2) drawing a sampling frame; (3)
constructing a categorization scheme with dictionaries; (4) intercoder validity
testing and results and; (5) the codebook used to construct and test the
categorization scheme.
OVERVIEW
CATA refers to the use of computer software to construct, refine, and test
schemes that classify text (or, more accurately, portions of text) to operator-defined
categories.828 In essence, the software identifies key words or phrases – “markers” –
of theoretical interest and then assigns them to mutually exclusive categories that
purport to measure some variable (here, identity) of interest. To conduct such an
analysis requires the creation of explicit coding rules that define categories as well 827 On the neglect of QCA in political science generally, and the measurement of identity in particular, see Abdelal, Herrera, Johnston and McDermott 2003: 17-19. A small but important literature on leadership and decision-making has made use of such methods. See Laver, Benoit, and Garry 2003: 311-31; Walker, Schafer and Young 1999: 610-25; Satterfield 1998: 667-90; Jewett and Turetzky 1998: 638-55; Larson 1988: 241-55. 828 The best introductions to QCA are found in Krippendorff 2004 and Neuendorf 2002.
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as accurate and exclusive indicators for each category. We might have a category
marked “Patriotism,” for example, that consists of words or phrases (“My country
right or wrong”) that are associated with the phenomenon of interest.
Because CATA requires stringent coding and testing procedures, it has
several advantages when compared with discourse analysis as practiced in political
science. Explicit coding rules enable both the replication and falsification of
empirical findings, for example, while the sharing of search dictionaries among
scholars holds the promise of generating cumulative findings.829 More generally, the
use of computer software removes the reliability problem often associated with
human coders. Simply put, computers do not tire, and thus their accuracy rate does
not diminish with increases in either sample size or the length of time involved in a
project. Frequency counts generated by CATA approaches also enables the
researcher to state findings in a more much precise fashion that is possible even with
the most diligent discourse analysis. This is especially important when we are
seeking to specify changing relationships among multiple identities or the
persistence of themes and tropes in discourse across time. Finally, QCA is an
unobtrusive method of investigation, and does not encounter the framing (priming)
effects associated with large-N surveys or experiments.
CATA does have limits, of course. Perhaps the most severe drawback of
CATA is that a blind reliance on frequency counts as a measure of a category’s
importance may miss entirely the fact that the meaning of the category has changed
across time. Yet this weakness, as with all methods, can be overcome if multiple
methods are adopted to triangulate the variable in question. On a practical note, one
829 This would be similar to the relationship between SPSS (which must be purchased) and algorithms that are devised and shared among users of a common platform. Note that replication can take place even if the sample size is small or the event is unrepeatable. Bootstrap estimates can be used, for example, to create several thousand “new” samples from an existing population. See Hogenraad and McKenzie 1999.
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of the most significant problems encountered in the present study is the absence of
clear guidelines for several key aspects of conducting CATA. Indeed, despite an
enormous literature on content analysis in communications, media and journalism
studies, and psychology, there is little consensus on how to (1) construct a sample
frame; (2) build and refine a dictionary or (3) assess whether coding results meets a
shared standard for accuracy. Below I detail how the current project dealt with each
of these problems.
CONSTRUCTING A SAMPLE FRAME
One of the first tasks of conducting CATA is to define a population of
relevant text and to derive a sample from it. I chose to draw a random sample of
public speeches, press conferences, and daily press briefings from two Russian
ministries: the Presidential Administration and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
These two ministries were chosen because of their pivotal role in shaping the nature
of the Russian identity project. In addition, a focus on these ministries reintroduces
the question of power that has been largely absent from existing constructivist
accounts of identity formation. It is clear, for example, that the competition for
defining the boundaries of the “new” Russian identity is one that is skewed by the
material advantages enjoyed by these state institutions.
The prevailing consensus within media studies suggests that two
“reconstructed” weeks are sufficient to generalize about the trends in a year’s worth
of text.830 I elected not to adopt this method, however. Such a selection rule is
statistically adequate for deriving general trends in the number of articles on a
particular theme (say, sports or international news) but is not fine-grained enough
830 A reconstructed week consists of 1 Monday, 1 Tuesday, etc., drawn randomly from the entire annual sample. This procedure is outlined in Lacy, Riffe, Stoddard, Martin, and Chang 2001.
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for capturing changes in relatively infrequent events (say, grievances or identity
markers). Instead, I used a more conservative standard for drawing a relevant
sample: I chose at random two documents per week, one from each ministry, for
every week in the sample under question (January 1993 to May 2004). This resulted
in a total of 1096 document records. All of these texts were either televised on
nightly news programs such as Vremya and Vesti or excerpted in daily newspapers
(or both). For inclusion in the data set, all documents had to be larger than 250
words, which skews the sample slightly away from routine, everyday statements and
toward more visible events (such as the annual State of the Nation address).831 The
data set contains almost 3 million words in total.
Is this a reliable sample? I believe that it is, though the poor state of record
keeping in the Yeltsin era, coupled with his infrequent public appearances and
widespread governmental confusion, does pose a challenge. Following Klaus
Krippendorff’s measures of reliability, we find that the sample does in fact meet
statistical requirements for reliability. Indeed, to reach a significance level of .05
with categories assumed to be relatively infrequent – that is, with a .1 probability of
being present in any given text – Krippendorff recommends a sample size of 730.832
Given that I have a sample size nearly twice this total, I am confident that the
collected documents provide a sufficiently random slice of the available text. There
is no question, however, that the data could be improved further by encompassing
all of the public transcripts of each administration.
831 On occasion, “news holes” were encountered where no speeches or briefings were held in a particular week. This occurred primarily during the summer months or the winter holiday break. In these cases, statements were drawn from the same month (usually the week preceding or following) in order to “fill” the hole. Putin’s own rhetorical style favors short, interconnected speeches that individually fall short of the 500 word selection rule. In this instances, I aggregated a day’s set of speeches into one file. The result, then, is that the sample consists of closer to 1300 speeches but only 1096 files. 832 Krippendorff 2004: 240.
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Transcripts for the Yeltsin era were drawn from the Federal News Service,
which possesses the most complete record of public statements and speeches for this
era. The FNS archive records 165 speeches by Yeltsin between 1993 and 1999.
After excluding those that did not exceed 500 words, I was left with 120 speeches
(73 percent of the total). The Foreign Ministry conducted 552 press briefings during
this era; 508 remained after the 500 word exclusion rule was applied (92 percent of
all events). Coverage for principal actors in the Yeltsin era is therefore surprisingly
good.
Under Putin, however, we see a marked increase in the frequency of
speeches and other public events, resulting in a substantial lowering of the overall
percentage of documents included in the dataset. The best estimate of the total
number of Putin’s speeches from 2000 to 2003 is 1409. This figure comes from a
limited-edition compact disc that was issued to key supporters as a thank-you for
supporting his “campaign.” 833 During this period, the selection rule yielded 200
speeches, or 14 percent of the estimated total. I have reason to suspect, however,
that this percentage would increase dramatically if we could eliminate all speeches
that did not reach the 500 word total. Similarly, it is estimated that the Foreign
Ministry issues between 30 and 35 public statements during press briefings in an
average month. The selection rule would therefore capture about 12-13 percent of
the total number of events before all speeches under 500 words are removed.
It should be noted, too, that these documents are sampled across different
audiences and issue areas to create distance between official rhetoric and foreign
policy outcomes. Put differently, the dataset encompasses speeches and briefings on
833 See http://kremlin.ru/articles/cd_rom_2004.shtml By contrast, ITAR-TASS reported that Putin participated in 53 press briefings and addressed the nation twice during 2004 (ITAR-TASS, 31 December 2004). Obviously, if this standard is used, the percentage of Putin’s speeches sampled here surges to nearly 100 percent.
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topics as diverse as farm policy, speeches to the Ministry of the Interior, and Putin’s
tightly scripted “Direct Line to the Nation.” It is true that these statements are not as
distant from the dependent variable as, say, novels and literary criticism, as Ted
Hopf advocates adopting when measuring identity.834 Yet a focus on these official
statements does have the advantage of restoring attention to power considerations in
identity construction. Moreover, these documents strike a balance between domestic
and international audiences. A selection rule that includes only “domestic” texts
risks missing a second, international, dimension of collective identity, if this
domestic-international division can be maintained at all. Sampling across both
dimensions thus alerts us to rhetorical inconsistencies and possible entrapment
dangers that we would miss if we relied solely on novels, thick journals, and other
“pulp” sources of identity.
Transcripts of press briefings, radio broadcasts, and other official statements
also provide an invaluable window into the mechanics of identity construction and
reproduction. These briefings are, in effect, the sites in which the official line is
extended, picked up, and then disseminated throughout the media to broader
audiences.835 The average press briefing at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, for
example, offers at least three opportunities for the regime to propagate its message.
First, the briefing opens with a statement from an MFA representative on a
particular issue (often the President’s weekly schedule). Next, the press, both
foreign and domestic, is allotted time to pose questions, again given the regime the
chance to repeat stock phrases. And, finally, briefings conclude with the MFA
disseminating background notes to journalists that reiterate the regime’s position.
834 Hopf 2002. 835 Nearly all (96 percent) of Russians report receiving the bulk of their information from nightly news broadcasts on the two state-owned television stations, ORT and RTR. Colton and McFaul 2001: Appendix C.
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These efforts may sound mundane, but it is through these briefings, as well as other
high-profile speeches, that capture how a regime casts and cements its identity
project.836 Such material constitutes the “back-story” from which the contours of an
official identity project are highlighted and repeated until they become routine and
ordinary.
In short, I believe this sample represents a reliable dataset from which a
baseline of trends in Russian identity can be derived. Our confidence in the findings
presented in Chapters Six and Seven is also increased by the fact that the sampling
rule creates a hard test for an identity argument since it demands persistence in
salient markers across multiple audiences and issues. Such a sampling frame also
allows us to recover empirically rhetorical contradictions and to identify “hot-
button” issues for the regime. Focusing on first constructing a baseline of official
identity is crucial, however, if we seek to build additional datasets that focus more
narrowly on specific issues and actors. Indeed, future work could use the baseline
established here to assess the relative salience of specific issues.
One final note deserves our attention. To conduct this type of analysis, the
researcher must take care to standardize occurrences of each category instead of
reporting raw frequency counts. The size of the documents under study must be
controlled for if spurious results are to be avoided and if time series research is
being undertaken. Standardization can be achieved using the simple formula:
836 Such efforts are not without moments of levity. During an 12 October 1999 MFA briefing, Mikhail Rakhmanin admonished journalists to “sit quietly and listen to what I have to say.” Apparently, the journalists had violated an unspoken taboo by rifling loudly through briefing materials while Rakhmanin was speaking on prior occasions. Rakhmanin solved the dilemma by decreeing that press materials would only be distributed after he had finished speaking.
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(x/y)*z
where:
x= standardization unit (i.e. 1000 words) y = sample size (in words)
z = number of tokens found in y
BUILDING CATEGORIES AND DICTIONARIES
The coding categories and search dictionaries (the list of markers or
“tokens” that comprise each category) were constructed inductively from a large
and varied sample of materials. Sources were as varied as newspaper articles,
protest slogans at demonstrations, scholarly tracts, television commercials, and
“official” pronouncements. In the final analysis, I drew on more than 1500 sources
to cast a wide net over a range of possible identity positions. Put differently, no a
priori categorization scheme was adopted. This is important because by sampling a
wide range of possible identities, we guard against omitted variable bias; that is, the
danger that our categorization scheme would miss an identity (or several) that was
not present in the sample.837 The analogy here is to archeology, where a researcher
must erect search gridlines over a wide area even if the object of interest only
occupies a small space within these guidelines. Without doing so, we are left unable
to say what is not in the sample with any confidence.838
The next step was to begin creating categories that mirrored the pattern of
meanings that I was finding across texts. Here I was aided by the use of
Concordance 3.0, a relatively simple content analysis program that allows
researchers to conduct keyword-in-context (KWIC) searches. KWIC searches
837 King, Keohane and Verba 1993: 172. 838 More formally, the QCA undertaken here is underpinned by a latent variable model that similarly informs Bayesian network analysis. On this point, see Lowe 2004.
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consist of a search string (a word or phrase) that Concordance then “grabs” across
all of the texts. All instances of the particular token are then displayed in context,
which enables the researcher to construct categories based on the attributes, often
adjectives, that cluster around a certain concept. To take one example, the word
Russia is a key term that all identity positions will reference. What is central,
however, are the phrases or adjectives used to describe Russia. Variation in these
attributes can form the basis of a category scheme that captures differences between
statist, nationalist, or Eurasian meanings of “Russia.”
This process of creating, and often dividing, categories can proceed
indefinitely. Ultimately, it is the researcher’s research question that guides this
investigation. For some projects, it may be possible, even desirable, to use off-the-
shelf categorization schemes such as the Regressive Image Dictionary (RID). Care
must be taken to ensure that these schemes are actually applicable to contexts
outside of which they were derived to examine. This is especially a problem if, as
with this project, the content analysis requires the use of a non-Latin alphabet and
where functional equivalents for a concept in RID may not be present in the
linguistic context. Since an enormous amount of time and effort is devoted to
crafting these dictionaries, identity research will receive an sizable boost if such
dictionaries are shared among researchers.839
Two additional points bear repeating. First, all documents used to construct
these categories must be removed from the sample to prevent “fitting” a coding
framework to a particular set of text too closely. Second, there is a vexing dilemma
that a researcher confronts when constructing these categories: the more tokens for a
specific category, the more observations are generally found but the more tokens,
839 There are precious few discussions of how to construct a coding framework. Among the best are Shapiro and Markoff 1998: 436-82, Bengston and Xu 1995: 8-15 and Smith 1992.
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the less likely that they all accurately capture the concept to be measured. This often
leads to a process of splitting and reforming category schemes to strike a balance
between number of observable measures and the ability of these tokens to reflect
accurately the core concept. A category with only 10 tokens may, for example, have
greater validity than the same category with 100 tokens, even if the latter category
records more occurrences.
The coding developed here consists of five main categories of identity
measurement that are further divided into 27 subcategories. There are approximately
650 individual tokens (words or phrases) in the category scheme. A list of all states
and international organizations was also created to allow for cross-tabulation
between, say, grievances and the target of such sentiment. During the initial phase
of coding, a substantial number of tokens were rejected because they did not meet
an 80 percent accuracy threshold. Again, with additional resources and time a
researcher could create larger categories. I believe, however, that there is a sufficient
number of accurate tokens in use here to capture a substantial amount of variation in
Russian identity over time.
CODING VALIDITY
The use of CATA removes coding reliability as an issue of concern since the
software will tirelessly count tokens with 100 percent accuracy. On the other hand,
the issue of intercoder validity still remains. I adopted a two-fold approach to
ensuring that the coding framework itself is valid, that is, its constituent categories
are actually measuring what I believe they are measuring. First, I trained three
coders at the European University at St. Petersburg to conduct an initial “blind” test
of the coding during December 2002-January 2003. The coders were purposefully
given vague instructions (in Russian) to mark identity statements, grievances,
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statements of affinity, and the intensity of such statements, in a random sample of
20 documents (about 100 total pages).840 This test was intended to see if (a) cross-
coder agreement on what fit in these categories was actually present and (b) they
could reproduce the framework that I had already devised. The “open” nature of this
testing also enabled the coders to suggest new categories (or revise existing ones)
that, as a non-native speaker, I may have missed or interpreted incorrectly.
A complete version of the coding was then re-tested in December 2004 by
three coders. Unlike the prior open coding, this time the coders were provided with
a codebook with explicit coding rules for each variable. This codebook is
reproduced below in English; the original was in Russian. Given that the data are
ordinal in nature, the appropriate measure of intercoder reliability is Pearson’s r.841
Table A1 records the reliability coefficients for pair-wise coding.
Table A1. Pearson’s r coefficients for intercoder reliability
Coder Pairs Pearson’s correlation coefficient (r)
Coder 1 and Coder 2 .847 Coder 1 and Coder 3 .904 Coder 2 and Coder 3 .809
As we can see, the coding rules possess a high degree of intercoder
reliability. There is a slight reduction in reliability in pairs involving Coder 2. This
is due in large measure to an extremely enthusiastic application of the coding
framework. Nonetheless, we can have a high degree of confidence in the
840 Coding instructions were issued in Russian and is available upon request. 841 Note that there is an important, and heated, debate about the proper measure of intercoder reliability. What little consensus exists centers around the problem of relying on percentage agreement across coders. I have avoided this measure and instead provided several indicators of reliability. On this point, see the exchange between Krippendorff 2004 and Lombard, Snyder-Duch, and Bracken 2004.
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replicability of the results found here. To ensure this, however, I conducted a second
test of intercoder reliability. I employed a two-tailed t test to rate intercoder
agreement among coder pairs. Identical results were produced as the first test. Table
A2 records these results.
Table A2. Two-tailed t test of paired coder reliability
Paired Samples Correlations
27 .847 .000Coder1 & Coder2Pair 1N Correlation Sig.
Paired Samples Correlations
27 .809 .000Coder2 & Coder3Pair 1N Correlation Sig.
Paired Samples Correlations
27 .904 .000Coder1 & Coder3Pair 1N Correlation Sig.
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CODEBOOK Russian Identity Project Trial 2.0 Contact Information Jason Lyall Department of Politics & WWS Princeton University 225 Bendheim [email protected] (609) 240-8024 Preamble This project seeks to measure various components of Russian collective identity. I have listed below a set of categories for these measures. Please record all occurrences of these categories in the texts that have been provided. Occurrences may be a single word or a particular phrase. Each word or phrase must be assigned to only one category; that is, these categories are mutually exclusive. Please record your coder ID, the document number, and the code and intensity scores for each observance (explained below). In addition, please copy-and-paste the word or phrase into the attached spreadsheet. A sample of the spreadsheet is provided below. Be sure to read all documents before coding. Note that not all categories may be present in the same document. And, finally, please do not compare results until all the documents have been coded.
Sample of Data Entry Sheet Coder
IR Documen
t Code Intensity Text Clipping Comment, if
any
Variable 1: Identity Content 101 Statism (Patriotism)
Description: Statements that express pride in a country, a government, and/or its actions. Statements may refer to a state’s international image (“Great Power”), the symbols of the state (i.e. a flag), or the attributes that describe the state (strong, effective, etc.). Here, the state, rather than the individual or the nation, is viewed as the focus of an individual’s allegiance.
102 Civic
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Description: Statements that describe Russian identity as civic and non-ethnic in character. Statements may refer to individual liberty, multiculturalism (or multi-nationalism), democracy, and/or inclusiveness and equality as central features of a shared identity.
103 Nationalist
Description: Refers to statements that describe Russian identity as being national in content. Reference may be made to attributes such as a shared ethnicity, kinship, history, or religion (or all of these attributes). Statements may also refer to the organic nature of the political community and may call for the state to reflect the values and boundaries of the nation (not vice versa).
104 Soviet
Description: Positive references to the Soviet past as the basis for a shared identity. Reference may be made to desirable Soviet attributes, to past successes, or to the need to return to a Soviet-style politico-economic system.
105 Religious
Description: Positive references to the role of Orthodox Christianity in providing the basis for a shared identity. References may include appeals to Church teachings, symbols, and/or the historical role of the Church in guiding society.
106 Eurasian
Description: Positive references to Eurasian values as the basis of shared identity. References may include allusions to Russia’s Eurasian heritage, its unique role as a bridge between East and West, or to civilizational divisions between West (Atlanticism) and East (Eurasian). In addition, reference may also be made to the conception of Russia as an empire or as a spatial entity of enormous size.
Variable 2: Grievances (External Scapegoating) A grievance is defined as a clear statement of dissatisfaction with a particular Subject, which could be an institution, actor, or state of affairs. Grievances may also contain a specific action that is either concrete (i.e. abolish the United Nations) or more diffuse (American strategy is harming Russia’s interests). There is no set limit on the length of a grievance. It could be a single word or phrase. And, in addition, several grievances could be expressed within the same
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sentence. Note, too, that a grievance need not be an expression of revisionist sentiment. It might, for example, express disapproval at an unwanted change in a favored institution. Outlined below are nine categories of particular grievances. 201 NATO expansion
Definition. A negative expression toward NATO expansion or its future plans to do so. The subject of this grievance may be explicitly mentioned (i.e. NATO expansion) or omitted (Russia is being encircled).
202 Economic grievances
Definition: A complaint against some negative change in Russia’s global economic standing. This may be explicit (Russia is being made a raw material exporter) or more general (Russia is not competitive in the present international economic order).
203 Western hypocrisy
Definition: An expressed belief that the current international order and actions of its leading members are marked by hypocrisy (“double standards”) that disadvantage Russia.
204 Territorial integrity
Definition: Statements that express concern over Russia’s viability as a sovereign state due to internal subversion by restless regions and minorities. These concerns need not be tied to any specific act of an external Power (see 205).
205 Foreign interference in domestic affairs
Definition: An negative statement expressing concern that external actors (states or NGOs) are working to influence unduly Russia’s political and economic development. Statements may be explicit (George Soros is corrupting Russia) or more general in nature.
206 American hegemony
Definition: A negative statement directed against the United States, its diplomacy, or the current nature of the unipolar international system. Negative references may be specifically aimed at the attributes of the United States or more general (i.e. the need to balance against American
448
dominance). If the United States is viewed as a specific security threat, however, it should be assigned to Code 201.
207 Social hierarchy
Definition: Statements reflecting concern that Russia is being isolated, ignored, or otherwise denied a “worthy place” in the current international order. Complaints may be specific (Russia has lost face in the international pecking order because of its decline) or general (Russia currently has low status in world politics).
208 Perceived abuse of Russian diaspora
Definition: Statements reflecting concern that Russian-speakers in the Near Abroad and elsewhere (i.e. Kaliningrad) are being subject to discrimination. Action may or may not be suggested.
209 General statement on the need for international change
Definition: A statement calling for some unspecified change to the current international order. Calls to implement or construct a “new world order” would fit here.
Variable 3: Culture of the International System This measure seeks to capture how an actor publicly portrays the wider international system. There are four possible positions, ranging from highly cooperative to highly conflictual. 301 Harmony («Лад»)
Description: Describes a situation where state interaction is governed by a sense of shared community and normative standards. References to the “international community” (or “civilization”), shared norms and values, and notions of legitimate and illegitimate acts should be present. Notions of sacrifice on behalf of the group, as well as special relations between members of the community, may also be present. Violence as a means of solving conflicts is never even considered, let alone discussed.
302 Stag Hunt («Организованная охота»)
Description: Describes a state of affairs where actors coordinate their actions around the pursuit of a mutually profitable or important goal. References to a
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shared struggle, as well as the means for achieving that end (such as multilateralism), should be present. Actors should accept the nature of the existing status quo – that is, there shared actions should not be aimed at overthrowing it – though some disagreement with certain aspects may be present. Violence as a means of conflict resolution is considered taboo in all but a narrow set of cases.
303 Prisoners’ Dilemma («Дилемма в тюрьме»)
Description: Describes a type of state interaction that is dominated by security concerns and the zero-sum interest maximizing calculations. Here, the tenets of realpolitik and security-driven behavior should dominate most state relationships. Violence is therefore a fairly prominent feature of the international landscape, though the use of this violence is bounded by a sense of restraint. Cooperation and coordination of actions should be seen as difficult, if not dangerous, since no central authority is present to enforce contracts. The system is, in a word, anarchic.
304 Deadlock («Тупик»)
Description: Describes a state of world affairs in which relations between states are dominated by concerns about relative military strength and state survival. Harsh enemy images and a fear of suffering at the hands of enemies are usually common. It is commonly believed that there are few, if any, limits on the use of military force, forcing states to have short-term horizons and to seek opportunities for the expansion of their control over neighboring states. Enmity, then, is the defining feature of the international system.
Variable 4: Internal Scapegoating 401 Ethnic or religious affiliation
Description: Negative references to the ethnic or religious attributes of minorities. Statements may invoke cultural stereotypes.
402 Terrorism
Description: References to the threat posed to Russia by international terrorist or specific terrorist organizations.
403 Criminal
450
Description: Statements that refer to “bandits” or “criminal groups” as enemies that need to be combated or otherwise incapacitated.
404 Sovereignty challenge
Description: Statements that depict a minority group (or groups) as a people seeking self-determination or engaged in a struggle for statehood (or greater autonomy).
Variable 5: Preferred Strategies 501 Integration
Description: Strategy that involves the fostering of closer ties (economic, social, military) with other Powers on either a bilateral or multilateral basis; positive statements on the need for cooperation and coordination among Powers.
502 Economic Self-reliance (Isolation or autarky)
Description: Strategy that calls for the adoption of an autarkic or mercantilist policy that emphasizes national resources, self-reliance, and mobilization of society. Negative references to cooperative or extensive relations with other Powers (too constraining or binding).
503 Defensive military measures
Description: Favorable mention to the need to maintain sufficient military force to deter rivals and the need to modernize armed forces, maintain military expenditures, and keep military treaty obligations. May also include references to the need to balance against emerging threats.
504 Offensive military measures
Description: Favorable mentions of strategies designed to increase size of military forces or defense expenditures; to deploy or use military force to counter rivals; to acquire territory or new satellites; to rearm rapidly. May also include references to strategies designed to create alliances or coalitions around expansionist ambitions.
505 Neutrality (or “multi-vectored” strategies)
Description: Favorable mention of need for a multi-vectored strategy, a strategy of pragmatism and/or of non-alignment with existing blocs in world politics.
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Variable 6: Intensity Scale (Qualifiers) 1 Strongly held belief
Description: Statement is couched in decided or firm language that leaves no doubt about the depth and direction of the actor’s views toward a particular Subject. For example, the view that “Russia is being encircled by a devious and rapacious NATO bent on Russia’s complete and utter destruction” would be coded 201 (1).
2 Moderately held belief
Description: Statement is couched in modest language that conveys an actor’s displeasure with a particular Subject in less strident tones than 1. For example, “NATO is encircling Russia, and this is a problem for Russia’s future security” would be represented by Code 201 (2).
3 Weakly held belief
Intensity of statement is weak or ambiguous; no action for redress is provided; may be stated as a conditional proposition. “NATO might be encircling Russia” would be represented by Code 201 (3).
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Appendix II: Coding Event Data
This appendix details the mechanics and decisions behind the use of an
automated coding procedure to create the scaled event data used in Chapters Six and
Seven. These data were drawn from a much larger dataset made available by Virtual
Research Associates, Inc. (VRA).842 The VRA Reader is an automated coding
program that identifies and classifies events from Reuters Business Briefing
newspaper articles according to a 157-event typology.843 This typology, known as
Integrated Data for Events Analysis (IDEA), also codes about 40 different aspects
of the event, ranging from the type of actors involved to the affect (cooperative to
conflictual) and damage associated with a certain action. An independent evaluation
of the VRA Reader’s accuracy was conducted by Gary King and Will Lowe. In their
view, the VRA Reader matches the accuracy rates of human coders on small sample
sizes and far exceeds them over larger datasets.844
Using IDEA as a framework, I then created my own datasets for Russia
(January 1992 to May 2003) as well as for China (January 1992 to May 2003) and
Iraq (January 1992 to March 2003). I do so by extracting all dyadic interactions
where Russia was the subject (that is, the doer) in the subject-object-action coding
framework used by the Reader. More simply, this amounts to extracting all data
where Russia was doing something to another actor. This rule in effect excludes all
data that record domestic level events within a country. Next, I focused on certain
actors that are connected to the crafting of foreign policy. These actors are the
national executive (represented by the code NEXE), government agents (GAGE),
842 VRA Data for 1991-2000 is available at: ftp://ftp.hmdc.harvard.edu/pub/events/vdc_events_1991-2000.zip 843 Available at: http://vranet.com/idea/default.htm 844 King and Lowe 2003: 617-42.
453
diplomats (DIPL), politicians (POLI) and the military (MILI). I then repeated these
steps for China and Iraq.845
The final step involved selecting, and then weighting, measures of
revisionist and status quo strategies. Not all of the 157 actions captured by the IDEA
framework were relevant for this study. In particular, care was taken to remove all
non-specific measures of rhetoric – praise, blame, empathy, and the like – from the
data to maintain distance from the independent variable’s measures. As listed
below, I employ 23 measures for revisionist strategies, and another 23 measures for
status quo actions. The weighting is as follows: “modest” challenges or expressions
of acceptance of the status quo are scored (-1,1), while “moderate” and “high” level
challenge or pro-social acts are similarly scored (-5,5) and (-10,10), respectively.
These scores depart from the scale provided by the IDEA framework. I felt
that there was a marked tendency in the IDEA values to underweight conflictual
actions, a fact due in part to the 10-point scale used by IDEA which allows routine
pro-social acts to swap easily a conflictual event that may be of critical importance.
For example, under the existing IDEA framework, an armed border violation
receives a value of -5, a low score that is fairly easily erased by five routine
diplomatic acts (each valued at 1 point). The 20-point scale I use makes conflictual
events, which are often rare even in the most revisionist state’s behavioral profile,
much more noticeable and more difficult to overcome through simple diplomacy.
The result of these efforts is a dataset of daily foreign policy observations
for Russia (N=3447), China (N=4007) and Iraq (N=3331). Monthly scores for pro- 845 Note that I did include the domestic use of military force as a measure of Iraq’s behavior. Unlike Russia and China, Iraq spent the 1990s fighting a low-intensity war with outside Powers on its own territory. As such, these measures should count as part of its “foreign policy” total. The exclusion of such measures for Russia and China actually biases the data away from a revisionist outcome since the use of force in Chechnya and in Tibet are not counted. These actions could, however, be plausibly considered “revisionist” since they violate shared international human rights norms.
454
or anti-status quo behavior were derived from summing the scores and then dividing
by the number of monthly observations (or X+Y/Z, where X equals the score of pro-
status quo actors, Y the total of revisionist acts, and Z the number of observations). I
list the specific actions and their values below.
Table AII:1 Measures for Degree of Revisionism
Action IDEA Code Value Type I: Threat Armed forces threat MTHR -1 Threaten military attack TATT -1 Non-specific threat TUNS -1 Specific Warnings WARN -1 Armed display of forces ADIS, NDIS, TDIS -1 Demand DEMA -1 Military Alerts MALT -1 Type II: Impose Costs Mobilization MDEM -5 Sanctions SANC -5 Reduce, Stop Aid REDA -5 Military blockade MBLO -5 Military border fortification BFOR -5 Break relations BREL -5 Expel EXIL -5 Reduce Activity REDR -5 Nuclear Alert NUCA -5 Type III: Use of military force short of war Armed actions RAID -10 Armed battle CLAS -10 Use of WMD CBRU -10 Border violation BVIO -10 Armed forces occupation or seizure of possession MOCC, SEIZ -10 Small arms attack GRPG, PEXE -10 Aerial Assault AERI -10
455
Table AII:2 Measures for Degree of Status Quo Behavior
Action IDEA Code Value Type I: Pro-Social Acts Agree or accept AGAC 1 Engage in Negotiations NEGO 1 Offer to Negotiate PTMN 1 Host Meeting HOST 1 Mediate Talks MEDI 1 Yield YORD 1 Agree to Settlement ATSE 1 Type II: Norm-Following Individual Acts Ease sanctions EASS 5 Demobilize armed forces DMOB 5 Extend Invitation INVI 5 Observe Truce TRUC 5 Offer peace proposal PTRU 5 Solicit Support SOLS 5 Improve Relationship IMPR 5 Grant GRAN 5 Ease Military Blockade EMSA 5 Type III: Norm-Following Collective Acts Collaborate COLL 10 Reward REWD 10 Extension of Military Aid EMAI 10 Extension of Humanitarian Aid EHAI 10 Extension of Economic Aid EEAI 10 Ratify RATI 10 Promise PROM 10
456
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Russian Newspapers Chechnya: khronika nedeli (a weekly broadsheet published by human rights organization in Moscow) Gazeta.ru Izvestiia Kommersant'' Kommersant''-Den’gi Kommersant''-Vlast' Komsomol'skaia pravda Krasnaia zvezda Lenta.ru Literaturnaia gazeta Nezavisimaia gazeta Nezavisimaia gazeta – Ex Libris Nezavisimoe voennoe obozrenie Novaia gazeta Novaia izvestiia Novoi svet (published by the St. Petersburg League of Anarchists) Obshchaia gazeta Rossiiskaia gazeta Russkii kur'er Segodnia Sovetskaia rossiia The Moscow Times Vremia novostei
Data Sources Polity IV Correlates of War (V.3.01) VRA Reader Data (available upon request) Russian Identity Project Archive (list of materials is available upon request)